The Dalian Forced Labor Camp, built in 2000, is specifically used for isolating and persecuting Falun Dafa practitioners. It is also a testimony of how the Dalian Municipal Government, the "610 office" (1), as well as Hao Baokun from the Justice Bureau of Dalian and Hao Wenshuai from the Dalian Labor Camp have all been following Jiang Zemin to persecute Falun Gong (Falun Dafa).
Between March and June 2001, within a period of only four months, Falun Dafa practitioners Yu Lixin and Wang Qiuxia were tortured to death there.
The front gate of the forced labor camp was guarded by the most vicious guards, who brutally persecuted Falun Gong practitioners. The guards were Han Yanmin Wan Yalin, Yuan Lingyue, and Tan Liping, chosen by the leader of the women's team.
The work places for the detained Falun Gong practitioners in the Second, Third, and Fourth Sub-teams were located in the east hall off the front gate. Hao Wenshuai, Han Yanmin, and Wan Yalin deceived the public on TV by using curtains to hide their crimes against humanity inside the labor camp. While practitioners were performing slave labor in the morning, the curtains were not allowed to be opened. Only the leaders could decide the time that the curtains could be opened.
Dafa practitioners at the labor camp have been forced work there since 2001. They had to perform manual labor such as silk-screening, tying bunches of flowers together, stringing beads, etc. Starting in 2002, the practitioners' work included packaging cotton swabs, sewing buttons on clothing, packaging coffee stirrers, picking beans, tying kelp into knots, tearing seaweed, and wrapping chopsticks for the "Sifang Wood Company."
The individual tasks were assigned to different divisions. One basket of kelp weighed about 90 pounds. Often detainees couldn't finish the assigned task, which resulted in prolonged working hours. Once, inmate Sun Bo (who was also known for kicking and beating practitioners and shackling them in painful positions), whose division had finished a certain task, went to ask the leader whether they could go upstairs for a break. However, the leader Liu Yuchan said, "Do you really think that you'll be allowed to take a break! Can it be possible?!"
To tear seaweed requires a person to stand continuously and work from the early morning to the evening, usually until after 9:30 p.m. Each worker had to finish an average of 45-67 pounds of seaweed per day. Dafa practitioners Li Yurong and Wang Lijun were both singled out for additional mistreatment by having their work hours increased.
In 2003, the main task at the labor camp was picking beans. Various types of beans needed to be sorted and prepared for export to different countries. The beans with a diameter of 7-9 millimeters had a higher defective ratio than those with different diameters. The acceptable ratio for defective beans is 15-19%, but in actuality the rate reached 24-25%. Each person was only able to finish little more than one bag (each bag weighed 110 pounds), although the quota was two and half to three bags per person per day. There were many kinds of beans, which were exported to Europe, the Middle East, and Cuba. Each single type of bean was stored in quantities of as much as 1,800 tons. They were sometimes brought in to the labor camp at a rate of 600 tons per day, which needed to be transported in three big containers and a big truck.
The police persecuted practitioners by forcing them to undertake intensive labor. If the task couldn't be finished on time, they forced all the teams, sub-teams and divisions to consider this failure seriously, calling them together to place blame. They also decreased the time allowed for sleeping, eating and breaks. Under this intense pressure, almost all types of beans were finished on time.
The small types of beans (2-6 mm in diameter) such as soybeans or mung beans were usually exported to Korea. Each bag weighed 78 or 56 pounds, and each person was assigned to fill 4-6 bags per day. The smaller soybeans were only slightly bigger than sesame seeds, but had to be carefully sorted from the ones that were worm-eaten, speckled, of abnormal color etc. The guards understood that the quota was high and hard to finish, but they still put pressure on the sub-teams. In the meantime they made use of the criminal inmates' psychology by offering them reduced sentences in exchange for putting increased pressure on Falun Gong practitioners. Physical abuse was common at the work place. Dafa practitioners felt suffocated by the pressures of their work quotas, coming close to mental and physical collapse each day.
Due to the monetary value placed on the import and export of goods, the sub-teams were not allowed to stop working and they had to take turn unloading the trucks. The incoming sacks weighed 55, 110, 143, or almost 200 lbs. Lunchtime was often delayed until late in the afternoon. By May and June 2002, many people were exhausted from loading so many big sacks. Dafa practitioner Li Guihong was even spitting out blood due to exhaustion.
Quality control was strict and if a batch of beans failed the tests, the beans would be pour out and the work would have to be repeated. Whoever was responsible for substandard work would be abused and beaten by the team leader Mi Hong (a drug addict, in charge of the Second Sub-team).
If one person had to repeat the work, it would implicate others as well; the whole group of three to four people would also be forced to do the work over. In the course of this labor, the workers' faces had to be constantly inclined forward, close to the beans, which caused the legs to feel numb. If someone had poor eyesight, she was not only abused by the group leader but also blamed by the other inmates. That kind of mental torture was as painful as being forced to stand inside a small cell (2) or to be subjected to other forms of torture.
Yuan Lingyue once set the work hours so that everybody had to get up at 4:20 a.m., start work at 4:40 a.m., and go upstairs to eat at 6:00 a.m. This regulation lasted for a long time but was later changed to 6:20 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. for the meals. Inmates were required to check each other for any forbidden items while standing in line for food. They focused on checking Dafa practitioners. Dafa practitioners who were suspected of hiding something would be searched to make sure that they were not keeping Teacher's writings. The whole process of body searches, eating, and clearing away the bowls was not allowed to last more than 20 minutes. Sometimes people just managed to obtain their bowl when the work bell went off again.
During the first half of 2003, drug addict Li Jing became the group leader of the Second Sub-team. She extended the work hours until 11:00 p.m., and punished Falun Dafa practitioners by calling a meeting where nearly 60 Dafa practitioners were assembled for stricter supervision. At the meeting she verbally attacked Dafa practitioners, and anyone who expressed disagreement was physically attacked by the criminal inmates. Each division consisted of five rooms, and each room contained 2-3 criminals who were trained and experienced and had abused Dafa practitioners in the small cell before.
Drug addict Li Jing hysterically shouted curses to make the practitioners suffer more. When picking beans, she indicated that only the beans on top should be sorted correctly, but not those on the bottom, so as to reduce the workload. She wanted to rely on cheating to pass the quality check. The more brutally she treated Dafa practitioners, the more rewards she got from the team leader, causing her to become even more unscrupulous about mistreating Dafa practitioners. Eventually, Li Jing was released ahead of schedule.
Any unfinished work had to be completed after the regular work hours ended and evening roll call had been called, and usually lasted until 9:00-10:00 p.m. or even until midnight. Sleep was not permitted if the work wasn't done. Rushing through the task was used as an excuse to force extra work, including packing toothpicks, chopsticks, cotton swabs, etc.
All the work was done on the floor of the dormitory, with the supplies lying about on the floor, which was completely unsanitary. The criminal inmates commented that now that they knew how they were packaged, they would never again use disposable chopsticks.
At one time, about 60 people were assigned the extra job of stringing beads. The rule was that only after finishing all the work would the division be allowed to go to sleep. Some divisions had to work until after midnight and others until 2:30 a.m. to finish their quota. The extra work was assigned according to the number of detainees in each division. It was hard to finish. When the workers were picking beans during the daytime and a load of chopsticks arrived, they had to drop everything to first carry the raw materials for the chopsticks upstairs. The finished products were then moved downstairs. The younger workers carried the materials on their shoulders and the older people needed to team up in order to be able to carry them. Falun Gong practitioners lived on the fourth and fifth floors, and they had to go up and down the steps with heavy loads of materials many times during the day. All the while, criminal inmates were watching the different floors, and the team leaders watched the hall or strolled up and down. If someone occasionally winked, talked, or made a gesture to another and was found out, she would be seized and punished immediately.
Even though carrying all these materials took extra time, the detainees still had to finish picking beans. The team and group leaders simply increased the total workload.
The main issues when evaluating the various work groups were overall aspect of the work site, work quality, ratio of defective beans, and timeliness of task completion. The team leader devised many incentives, for example, setting up the "advanced honor award" among the sub-teams and setting up the "mobile red banner award" among the dormitories. Rewards included increased visiting hours, more phone calls, or picking out the easier beans. The criminal inmates tried to outperform themselves and became ever more unscrupulous in complaining about Dafa practitioners. The labor camp's management was always trying to harm people.
There were many prohibitions at the work sites:
If any of the labor camp regulations were violated, or if quotas or other criteria were not met, a detainee would be punished by having to wrap chopsticks, sometimes until 1 a.m. If no extra work was available, the punishment might be being forced to stand until midnight or 1:00 a.m. Other methods of punishment included denying permission to meet with family members or being denied any snacks for a whole month. Prisoners might be forced to carry a certain amount of beans upstairs, sort them at night, and take them downstairs again in the morning. For answering questions defiantly, prisoners were punished by being placed in a small cell.
The leader of the Second Sub-team, Yang Shengsheng was very vicious. Zhao Yang, Liu Yuchan, Wang Shiqing, Duan Huixian, Xu Lili, Cao Zhi, and Huang Juan were known as being particularly brutal police officers. All of them invented cruel ways to control and utilize other people to torture Dafa practitioners.
Yang Shengsheng never openly beat people, but she inflicted pain by pinching practitioners while dragging them by the arms. It was well known that she was vicious. One time she was dragging Dafa practitioner Liu Yaqin by her collar from the bedroom to the gate of lobby. Liu Yaqin suffered a heart attack and could not move, but Yang Shengsheng still wouldn't let her go, accusing her of feigning illness. She also punished Dafa practitioners by not allowing them to go to sleep and denying them use of the bathroom for the whole night.
Unless they had special permission from the team leader, even if a detainee was in poor health she had to finish her work quota.
The enslavement and brutal torture of Falun Dafa practitioners spotlight the viciousness of the guards at the forced labor camps. As Falun Dafa practitioners, we should refuse any of the commands or instructions issued by these people, and we should stop their vicious behavior using our Dafa practitioners' righteous thoughts according to Teacher's new article, "Stop the Evil Acts with Righteous Thoughts." We also need to find ways to prevent the public from committing crimes against Dafa practitioners, instead of feeling helpless and simply accepting this persecution.
Notes
(2) "Locking up in a small cell": The detainee is locked up in a very small cell individually. The guards handcuff practitioners in a fixed position, in which the practitioners can neither move nor lie down. The small cell is very damp and no sunshine comes in. Detainees have to urinate and defecate in the cell. Only half of a regular meal is served to detainees locked up in a small cell during the daytime. During the night rats are running around. The stench in the small cell is so bad that it is difficult to breathe.