The Shuanghe Labor Camp in Qiqihar City of Heilongjiang Province prosecuted Falun Dafa practitioners by various means including hanging, beating, cuffing of hands and feet, mentally disciplining, blocking access to visits from relatives, and restricting any means of communication, even by writing.
'Hanging' means suspending practitioners up on thick heating pipes, the pavilions outside, or on the doorframes.
'Beating' involves shocking and beating people with electric batons. Other physical abuses are kicking and punching, and slapping in the face.
'Cuffing' refers to handcuffing practitioners to beds with their hands on their backs. Cuffed in this way, practitioners can only squat or kneel on the ground. One 59-year old lady squatted and kneeled this way for three whole days. Some practitioners had to squat or kneel this way for five days and nights. When they were released from this method of cuffing, their feet were numb and it took several months for them to recover. During the cuffing, the practitioners were neither allowed to wash their faces or to brush their teeth. Each day they were given only two meals, each of which included a piece of less than one liang [one liang is about one and half ounces] corn cake and a piece of finger-thick salty radish. The cuffs wouldn't be removed even when they were having meals. The labor camp let prisoners feed the cuffed practitioners. Another way of cuffing involves handcuffing practitioners behind the back, to the legs of beds. The cuffed practitioners must squat day and night for half a month or twenty days. Again, the labor camp let common, criminal prisoners supervise the torture.
'Disciplining' means putting a practitioner's bed between the beds of two criminal prisoners. When seeing us practicing the Falun Dafa exercises, the prisoners would beat us up. Sometimes, about a dozen of common prisoners would beat one Dafa practitioner. It took more than one month for some practitioners to recover from the wounds caused by the beatings. We were under the surveillance of the prisoners and the guards all the time. They did not allow us to talk. When a new, common, criminal prisoner arrived at the labor camp, she would soon become a person in charge of disciplining the practitioners. Even Liu Aiqin, well known in the camp for her underdevelopment in intelligence, became a capable person in disciplining Dafa practitioners. This was because the camp has a rule that those prisoners who had beaten and tortured the practitioners would be rewarded with reduction in their prison terms. Because of their deeds of persecuting practitioners, the criminal prisoners' prison terms were reduced by half, or even more. The guards let the prisoners force-feed practitioners. The prisoners tried to insert the feeding tubes every day for three consecutive days. Furthermore, they intentionally chose to use the thickest tubes. If they could not succeed in force-feeding the Dafa practitioners, they would dump all the food onto the practitioners' bodies.
'Blocking' means the labor camp leaders were afraid that the truth about the persecution of practitioners was exposed, they shortened the number of the monthly family visits from twice to once and the duration of each visit from 30 to 15 minutes. In the end, no family visits were allowed. Since they were also afraid that we would write about what we had suffered, they took all our pens away. They told us that if we wrote letters they would not send them out . Therefore, the camp seized all our letters for appealing and letters to family members.
Restricting means that they would put us who practiced Falun Gong in the prison into solitary cells, which were rooms of about a dozen square meters [about 130 square feet]. Seven or eight people were put inside a solitary cell, and they had to sleep, eat, drink, have bowel movements and urinate in the same room. The door was locked. In each solitary cell, there was at least one criminal prisoner who was put in charge all the time. In the hallway, there were also common prisoners and guards on duty day and night. The practitioners were not allowed to move one step out of the cell. The windows were covered with two layers of plastic cloth and the practitioners could see nothing outside. There were a total of eleven such solitary cells. When sometimes there were not enough solitary cells, the guard offices would be emptied and temporarily used for solitary cells. Some practitioners were put in the solitary cells for several months. The wicked guards often made unexpected searches for Falun Dafa books and the Teacher's articles. They searched everywhere from outerwear to undergarments, pants, and shoes.
This labor camp was working day and night in "reforming" Dafa practitioners. They also let the so-called former practitioners who had been "reformed" come into the solitary cells. Several such people besieged one Dafa practitioner. Because these so-called "reformed" persons [the people whose mind has gone astray due to Jiang Zemin regime's brainwashing or torture] were completely under the devil's control, they strangled and slapped some Dafa practitioners.
What the labor camp is actually doing is to try to "reform" good people into bad people. However, the evil can never conquer the righteous and the dirt and evilness will be finally eliminated.
All kind-hearted people please extend your concerns and help to the Dafa practitioners who are undergoing this hardship.
Falun Dafa practitioners from Mainland China
March 31, 2001
