(Clearwisdom.net)

Wuling Prison captors torture prisoners brutally.

Although the chief of the prison and the heads of each prison ward all signed a guarantee stating, "No torture of Falun Gong practitioners; guarantee the safety of Falun Gong practitioners' lives," they still beat practitioners so brutally that each practitioner who has been incarcerated there has physical injuries. Neither their health nor their lives have been protected at all.

Here are a few examples:

Practitioner Gu Zhihui in the third division is still under strictly controlled monitoring for refusing to work.

Practitioner Xiao Yuanxue in the fourth division is already 60 years old. Prison guard Meng beat him because his voice was too soft when he greeted the officer before entering the gate.

Practitioner Mr. Wang Xuejun, who had been in the second division, died suddenly in 2005. The guard lied, saying that Mr. Wang died because he was sick but refused to take medicine. It was said that 69-year-old Mr. Wang was hung up and beaten for doing the Falun Gong exercises. The guards at one time broke his food bowl in the dining hall for eating too slowly.

In November 2005, Wuling Prison tried to take some video of the prison to apply for the "provincial model prison" award. Practitioner Mr. Zhou Zixian in the fourth division refused to put on the prison uniform. The chief of the fourth division, Huang, ordered the criminal inmates to force him to do so. He also told the criminals that they could do whatever they wanted as long as they didn't beat Mr. Zhou to death. The criminals tore Mr. Zhou's clothes and tied his hands. Mr. Zhou shouted, "Falun Dafa is good! Stop persecuting good people." His voice, which was usually very soft, shocked everybody. He was hung up in the prison factory. The guards also hung some signs on his neck. The signs had words attacking and slandering Falun Gong and its founder. Mr. Zhou, however, was very kind to his captors. He told them that doing bad things would meet with karmic retribution.

The following day at lunch, the criminals forced him to put on the prison uniform and tied his hands behind his back. They pulled him to the dining hall. On the way there, he kept shouting, "Falun Dafa is good!" The guards then locked him in the solitary cell for two months for shouting in a public place. Mr. Zhou did not have a coat or shoes in this cell during the winter. His feet hurt from the cold weather. His daughter came to see him from Taiyuan City, which is 1,000 miles away, but his captors didn't let her see him.

It was cold and damp in the solitary cell. Mr. Zhou's hair turned grey and his eyesight got worse, too. Two days before the 2006 Chinese New Year, the new chief of the third team of the fourth division, Hu Wei, came to the solitary cell to release him, but Hu Wei beat him badly so that Mr. Zhou's face was swollen. Mr. Zhou started a hunger strike to protest the torture. During the 12 days on the hunger strike he was beaten badly several times. He was also hung up for eight days. On February 5, five to six guards beat Mr. Zhou so badly in the hallway that his hands bled. The guards who beat Mr. Zhou that day were: chief of the fourth division Zhang Xiankui, deputy chief Zhang, political head Zhang Xuebiao, and deputy political head Sun Hai.

Practitioner Zhang Peng, who is jailed in the first team of the fifth division, was transferred from the Ruanjiang Detention Center. In November 2005, since he refused to wear the prison uniform, guards handcuffed him behind his back. This is a very brutal torture, which can cause people to become handicapped. The guards pulled one of Mr. Zhang's arms over his shoulder and the other up behind his back. Then they handcuffed his hands together. Mr. Zhang was forced to bend down. He was immobilized like this for four or five hours and could not straighten up after his release. The guards out him in a solitary cell in the afternoon.

A few days later he was sent to an intensive jail room. He was released from that room in December 30, 2005. After being released he still refused to put on the prison uniform or wear a prison number button or put on a yellow belt over his clothes. He refused to greet the guards or do the labor. Mr. Zhang Peng also kept asking guards to stop torturing Zhou Zixian. He asked the guard in his team to hand his appeal to the prison chief. He was hung up for an entire morning because of this request.

On February 3, 2006, since he didn't put on the jail's yellow belt over his clothes, guards hung him up at dinnertime. That night several guards took him to an office. They took off Mr. Zhang's pants and beat his buttocks with a bamboo stick. He was badly injured and bled. Later, they locked him in the special jail room. It was snowing and raining that night. They took away his sweater, coat, and pants. They refused to give his clothes back to him, although the practitioners in the fifth division started a hunger strike to protest. The guards who tortured him were: the deputy chief of the prison, Wu Guogang; the chief of the fifth division, Zhang Wenjun; the deputy chief of the fifth division, Li Chunhua; the political head of the fifth division, Dai Minggui; the head of the first team, Liu Yongwen; and the political heads of the first team, Gao Shibiao and Xiong Chaohui.

After the tortures in the Wuling Prison were exposed on the Internet, practitioners in China and overseas wrote letters and called the prison, clarifying the truth. Some guards learned the truth and stopped the torture. The environment in the prison changed a little bit but is still bad.

The prison officials are very brutal to the non-practitioner prisoners, too. The evil atmosphere pervades the entire prison. People often hear the guards say, "Hang So and So up." It is very painful to be hung up. The victim often loses consciousness after being hung up for a long time. Sometime the victim's hands bleed. The guards often extend the time they leave a victim hanging whenever they feel like it: half a day, one day, several days, even half a month. If the criminals cannot finish their work assignments, guards beat their buttocks with a bamboo stick.

The guards also force them to lie down on the ground and insult them. Some guards torture the criminals so badly that somebody might become insane or even kill themselves. For example, Xie Wenqing in the fourth team was tortured to death by guards Pi, Zhang, and Yao in 2004. One criminal in the second team was tortured so badly that he killed himself later. The prison gave his family 80,000 yuan in hush money to put an end to the matter. In 2005, a criminal in the fourth team was hung up and beaten and became traumatized. He was sent to a hospital but died later.

Prisoners don't have free time. Their only breaks are on some important holidays. They are forced to work 12 hours--and sometimes even 14 to 15 hours--a day. The work environment is full of toxic dust, but the prisoners don't have any protection. Some of them have developed lung disease. When the government officers came to inspect the prison, the prison shortened the work hours. The officials ordered the prisoners to tell the inspectors that they always worked eight-hour shifts and that they did have safety protection devices when they worked in the toxic environment.

They don't have good care when they get sick. The equipment and medicine in the prison hospital are very primitive. The sick prisoners still have to work, even if they have a doctor's documentation that they should not work. If they refuse to work, the guards verbally abuse and even beat them. The guards never keep their promises and neither do they obey the law. When prisoners try to assert their legal rights, the guards always reply, "Do you have rights here?"

At the end of 2005, Wuling Prison officials applied for the "provincial model prison" award. While the prison was being inspected, they observed the rules such as an eight-hour work shift and a nap-break after lunch. But after the inspectors left, everything went back to the way it was before. There are some appeals letterboxes in the prison, which are supposed to be checked for mail every seven days. Those who wrote petitions were actually beaten, while none of the guards were ever punished for their bad behavior. For example, one prisoner in the fifth team was beaten by Yang Jinsheng, a guard in the second sub-team of the fifth team, for writing a letter to report that a prisoner was beaten by a guard. This prisoner was beaten so badly that it took a long time for him to recover.

The fourth team is the most evil team. The guards there often torture prisoners severely. They didn't stop torturing even when the prison was applying for the "provincial model prison" award. Hanging them up, locking their hands behind their backs, beating them with a bamboo stick, letting them bake in the strong sun, and forcing them to beat each other with wooden sticks are some of the tortures they often subjected the prisoners to.

Chief of the Wuling Prison Zhang Kewu

Deputy Chief Wu Guogang: 86-13907428148(Cell)

Mailing address: Wuling Prison, Changde City, Hunan province 415116