Voice of America

By Toronto correspondent Ming Yan

November 23, 2002

There have been many reports by media outlets outside of China on Chinese authorities' persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Wanjia Forced Labor Camp in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province is notorious for its brutality. The Chinese government firmly denies that Falun Gong practitioners are being tortured. Ms. Yuzhi Wang, a Falun Gong practitioner who was incarcerated in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp and was rescued from the United Arab Emirates by the Canadian government, exposed the persecution facts to this Voice of America correspondent.

Yuzhi Wang is 46 years old and a former resident of Harbin City in Heilongjiang Province. Earlier this month, when she was about to be sent back to China by the United Arab Emirates government, she received a special visa from the Canadian government allowing her to come to Canada to be reunited with her family. Wang said she started her Falun Gong practice in 1998 and has been detained three times for her belief. The most recent previous detention was in July 2001.

Wang said, "I was withdrawing money from a bank when they (the police) arrested me as a traitor against China. I was detained at the Yaziquan Second Detention Center of Harbin until November 6th. I was then transferred to Wanjia Forced Labor Camp Hospital. At the time, my health was in terrible condition. To be more specific, my blood pressure was under 60 and both of my eyes were bleeding and festering. Despite my poor health, the Harbin '610 Office' and the provincial police bureau gave orders to send me there."

Wanjia Forced Labor Camp is located in the Daoli District of Harbin. At least 200 Falun Gong practitioners have been held there at any given time since the beginning of the persecution. The practitioners have to endure attempts to brainwash them. Every day, they have to watch films and listen to speeches that defame Falun Gong. Some practitioners refused to give up their belief and went on a hunger strike to protest. The administrators force-fed them. Yuzhi Wang said, "I remember a practitioner named Ms. Shang. They grabbed her hair and knocked her head against the wall and the floor. She was almost knocked out. When she was unconscious, they force-fed her by inserting a tube into her nose. The tube was not sterilized. They simply rinsed it in the washbasin, and used it to force-feed her with corn flour and cold water."

Wang said that practitioners were tortured in many ways in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp. For example, the practitioners were hung up and whipped, stripped naked and shackled to iron chairs for long periods of time, deprived of sleep and shocked with electric batons. They were hung up with their hands shackled behind their backs for as long as several days. Female practitioners were locked in cells together with male criminal inmates, etc. She said that under such torture, many people were on the verge of death. They were sent to the Labor Camp's hospital, but what awaits them there is only a different kind of torture.

Wang said, "At that time, many practitioners could only lie in bed, unable to take care of themselves. Yet the doctors would take off their clothes, and use iron or steel spoons to scrape their scabies. There would be blood all over their body, and the doctors washed the blood off with rusty tap water. I saw this with my own eyes and heard their heart-breaking shrieks. I cannot use words to describe that dreary sound. I was watching with my face bathed in tears."

The information provided by Falun Gong sources indicates that at least 8 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp since the beginning of this persecution. [...]

Yuzhi Wang protested with hunger strikes continuously while being detained in Wanjia Forced Labor Camp. After ten months, her health severely deteriorated. Wang said, "Towards the end of my hunger strike, they force-fed me everyday. They inserted a tube into my nose very rapidly, which caused my eyes and nasal cavity to fill with dried blood and scabs. My eyes were almost blind. They saw that it was indeed extremely difficult for me to recover so they called in my relatives to watch me."

Wang was released in May. With the help of her family, she went to the United Arab Emirates to visit relatives. She was arrested by local police [Editors' Note. Police in the United Arab Emirates were acting under pressure from Chinese Embassy officials] for distributing Falun Gong pamphlets. The Chinese embassy in the United Arab Emirates claimed her to be a dangerous criminal, and negotiated with the UAR to extradite her to China. However, with the intervention from the Canadian government, she was able to come to Canada.

(Translated from Chinese report: http://www.voanews.com/chinese/)