[Minghui Net] Since November of 2000, many Dafa practitioners in Hebei Province have been illegally sent to labor camps. Gaoyang Labor Camp in Baoding City, Hebei Province received numerous practitioners, including those transferred from other labor camps. Female practitioners were detained in a concentration camp, while male practitioners were dispatched to branch labor camps. The following are my personal experiences.

Several dozen of us Dafa practitioners were transferred to Gaoyang Labor Camp in November 2000. On the afternoon of our arrival, we were assigned to several labor teams. It was cloudy and cold and in the evening it began to snow. After we got off the bus, the guards told us to wait in the courtyard for questioning. We were not allowed indoors until 8 PM. While we waited, prison guards came to ask each practitioner whether he or she would continue to practice Falun Gong. Anyone that answered yes would receive electric shocks from a high voltage baton; some were shocked without even being asked. At around 10 PM, some prison guards called upon those who had not been questioned and sent them to the snowy outdoors for questioning. When the last person had completed the questioning and returned it was already past midnight. Actually, the so-called questioning (besides some simple inquiries) primarily consisted of torturing the practitioners using such methods as the "telephone cranking" (using an electrical generator) and other forms of torture in a vicious attempt to force practitioners to give up their belief. The guards told the practitioners to sit on a special rug. They soaked the practitioners' thumbs in water and then connected their thumbs together with a cranking telephone (a generator). During the questioning they would crank the telephone, making their bodies convulse. Some practitioners were thrown off balance and fell to the ground. When the guards weren't satisfied with an answer, they would immediately crank the phone as punishment. During the nearly two-hours of being intermittently shocked with a high voltage electric baton, I was in great pain. I felt the electricity permeate through my body. Because I refused to cooperate, the guards used electric batons to strike my mouth and other parts of my body, in addition to beating and kicking me. As a result of this brutality, several of my teeth become loose, my mouth was full of blood, I developed a terrible chest pain and had difficulty breathing for a long time. The person who tortured me was the head of Labor Team No. 5.

Practitioners were assigned to labor camps several days after they arrived to join the Team. Twenty people were squeezed into a room of 17-18 square meters [about 180-190 square feet]; sometimes even more people were added. The overcrowded conditions were extremely harsh; people had to sleep on their side, and it was impossible for one to turn over without everyone else doing the same. The guards would watch TV whenever they wanted, at midnight or even early in the morning. It was impossible to have a sound sleep. We had to drink tap water in the cold winter [tap water is not drinkable in China/by translator]. Meals were no more than cabbage soup and buns. Once a practitioner even found a dead rat in the soup.

On November 18, 2000, I was sent to the Tianyu Corporation in Liuhe Village to conduct compulsory work in a cloth-printing workshop. I had to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. No family or relatives were allowed to visit. No laws applied there. The guards said, "Our words are the law." A slight mistake in the operation would result in beatings. They asked the team leader to act as the abuser, who carried a club with him all the time. No practitioners were given the right to defend themselves or to question the treatment. They were forced to obey and to endure silently. Beating was a daily occurrence.

The guards treated the practitioners as slaves. They not only randomly beat and cursed practitioners, but also took the practitioners' belongings as they wished. When we arrived at the branch camp the first day, the attendant took a practitioner's belongings after the "luggage inspection." Later on we found out that this is a common practice. The prices in the labor camp's convenience store were usually double what the outside price was. If you had money, the guards would force you to buy things for them.

No matter what the weather was like, even if it was freezing or snowing heavily, some of us would have to eat outside. Because the team leader thought that the room was too crowded, he could order some people to go out whenever he felt like it.

Practitioners were forced to carry out intensive work for many hours everyday. This not only caused them physical and mental fatigue, but also increased the chance of accidents. One time, a machine crushed the tips of my forefinger and my middle finger on my right hand. Other practitioners who worked under very irritating conditions for long period of time experienced swelling of the parts of their body exposed to air and their skin became itchy and painful resulting in all if the exposed portions of skin to split or fall off. This was tremendously painful, and impossible to completely describe the persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in such a short article.

A Practitioner in Mainland China

February 2001

Labor re-education place: Liuhe Village Industrial Region Xintianyu Textile Co., Ltd., Gaoyang County, Baoding City, Hebei Province.

Telephone: 86-312-6631858 Fax: 86-312-6635858 Zip Code: 071500