(Minghui.org) A Wuhan City, Hubei Province resident was taken to the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center as he refused to renounce his faith in Falun Gong.
When he returned to work after a week-long national holiday (October 1-8, 2020), Mr. Zhang Huaping, a librarian at the Hubei University of Technology, was approached by the police and school administration. They ordered him to give up his faith in Falun Gong and threatened to fire him or take him to a local brainwashing center. As Mr. Zhang refused to comply, he was arrested on October 16, 2020. It took days for his family to find out that he has been taken to the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center.
The authorities claimed that Mr. Zhang’s arrest was part of their nationwide “zero-out” campaign, which was launched earlier this year as a coordinated effort to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist to give up their belief.
The Hubei Province Brainwashing Center, also known as the Banqiao Brainwashing Center or Nanhu Brainwashing Center, is one of the main brainwashing centers that carry out the most severe persecution of Falun Gong. Many other brainwashing centers in the country learned torture techniques from them, including sleep deprivation, long hours of standing, force-feeding, beating, deprivation of food and water, electric shocks, and forced drug administration. A combination of different torture methods, as well as brainwashing and mental torment, are often used to target the practitioners to force them to renounce their faith.
Since it was established in February 2002, over 1,000 practitioners have been held at the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center, and some of them were tortured to death. Some practitioners have been repeatedly targeted and taken to the brainwashing center, including Mr. Zhang.
Past Persecution of Mr. Zhang
After the Chinese communist regime began its persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, Mr. Zhang has been subjected to multiple arrests and detainments for upholding his faith.
He was first arrested in August 2000. The police ransacked his home and beat him in the police station.
Mr. Zhang was arrested and had his home ransacked again in November 2001. Due to his arrest, the university administration downgraded his annual performance rating in 2002, withheld his salary for a month, and forbade him from being promoted for three years.
Mr. Zhang was arrested once more in February 2002 and detained for a month. Four months later, the university’s security personnel took him to the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center. He remained in a delirious state for a long time after being released one month later.
Mr. Zhang’s fifth arrest was on September 5, 2004, after being reported for distributing Falun Gong-related materials. The police ransacked his home and took him to the Yangyuan Brainwashing Center.
He was arrested for the sixth time and taken to the Hubei Province Brainwashing Center on May 18, 2010.
