(Minghui.org) Many female Falun Gong practitioners have been illegally imprisoned at Jiangsu Provincial Women's Forced Labor Camp since 2000. Among them are women in their sixties and seventies, as well as single women in their twenties. The guards have subjected them to a variety of tortures and brainwashing for not giving up their beliefs. Attempting to force them to give up their beliefs, the guards have shocked with them with electric batons, deprived them of sleep, exposed them to the sun and freezing cold, forced them to stand for long periods of time, denied them use of the restroom, forced them to take unknown drugs, etc. I personally witnessed all of this in 2010 and 2011. Below is my account.
1. Inhumane Torture
The first day a Falun Gong practitioner arrives at the labor camp, her hair cut is off and she looks like neither a man nor a woman. Two or three inmates monitor her around the clock and don't let her talk or look at other practitioners. If she does so, the inmates yell at and curse her. If a practitioner dares to object, the guards back up the inmates and mistreat the practitioner even more severely.
One of the most common ways used to torment practitioners is not letting them use the restroom. This makes their faces turn white and bellies ache. Some of us were forced to wet our pants. For instance, Ms. Wang Wenjuan soiled her pants on the drill ground. When this happened to Ms. Xie Lihua, the guards and inmates cursed and mocked her. Some had lasting complications such as urgent or frequent urination.
We were forced to do morning drills and stand in military style every day in the labor came, and were also forced to do endless marching and double marching. We did this every day, in the cold of winter and the heat of summer. Our legs swelled, our skin became chapped, and our feet swelled so badly that we could not put on our shoes. However, the drills never ended. Every day we were forced to sing the CCP songs before and after meals, and on our way to the dining area and back. Some guards forced us to sing the songs for an hour, so we only had a few minutes to eat. We had to eat every meal in a hurry, otherwise we would starve.
Guard Qin Ling once forced us to shout, “Greetings, leader!” for an hour after our dinner, because when we encountered an unknown higher ranking official on the road inside the labor camp we didn't shout, “Greetings, leader!” So she made everyone shout it for an hour. Guard Chen Qian was also very mean. Even if the inmate spoke just one sentence, as soon as the person in the watch tower recorded the inmate's name, Chen Qian would double the punishment by forcing her to handwrite the regulations of the labor camp five times, which usually took until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.
These are only some of the human rights violations that took place in the Jiangsu Provincial Women's Forced Labor Camp. Such things happened daily. The guards were not only heinous themselves, they also trained a group of hitters, who under their incitement became extraordinarily brutal and frequently spoke dirty words. They would say themselves, “A gentle woman would become a shrew if she came here.”
Under this intense pressure, many practitioners developed high blood pressure, and the guards forced them to take drugs to lower it. Some were forced to take more than three different drugs. When Tang Guofang from the Forced Labor Bureau came to the third brigade, we were forced to watch videos slandering Dafa and write “thought reports” every day. They intended to confuse us with their evil theories.
2. Horrid Living Conditions
The third brigade in the labor camp held over 30 inmates, at peak times over 40. Four of us slept on the one-meter-wide bed at noon, and three at night. We could only lie on our sides, packed tightly, to sleep. In the summer the heat was unbearable. Our jail clothes were filthy and smelly. In order to save water, the labor camp reduced water pressure to the faucets. The water pressure there was even less on the fourth floor, where most practitioners were held. There was very little water to wash, and several of us had to share one faucet. Sometimes when we were partially finished with the washing, we were not allowed to continue, so we had to hang out our clothes, still full of laundry powder, in the sun to dry. The pole was less than 3 meters long and held 50 to 60 pieces of washing were piled on it. In winter our underwear was very difficult to dry, and even the washed clothes were still filthy and smelly. Oftentimes we had no choice but to wear wet clothing.
On foggy days, the guards would not let us go to the dining area for breakfast. They told the group leader to use black trash bags to transport the buns and congee, and forced us to have breakfast inside our cells. The trash bags were supposedly for holding trash, but were often used to hold buns and congee. We were forced to do cleaning every day. We had to wipe the floor clean so that not even a hair could be found. The windows also needed to be cleaned and free of dust. Our quilts had to be packed neatly. But we were not allowed to wash our hands, brush our teeth, or wash our faces. Only the group leader was allowed to use the washroom.
The other inmates were also treated quite brutally. One inmate was tortured until she had a mental collapse. Guard Xu Jianqiu ordered several inmates, including group leader Chen Yajing, to seal this inmate's mouth with clear tape around the clock, causing her mouth to be swollen and full of blisters. When we had our drills downstairs, we often heard the horrid screams of this inmate from her cell. She was covered in blood and purple bruises, and they often often pinched her nipples. In the end she had a mental collapse and was taken to a rehabilitation center for “treatment.”
3. The Guards Lived Like Queens
Falun Gong practitioners were tortured both mentally and physically at the labor camp, but the guards lived like queens. They picked two capable “nannies” to do their everyday cleaning and laundry. The nannies washed and dried their quilts in the winter and frequently cooked meals and made dumplings for them. The nannies also had to buy daily supplies such as toilet paper, sanitary napkins, laundry powder, mops, and washcloths for the guards. The nannies were punished if they made just the smallest mistake.
4. Secret Accounting in the Labor Camp
Every month we were given only the total sum of our expenses, with no itemization. We didn't know how our money was spent. The items sold at the labor camp were more expensive than the market price. We were mostly given food that had gone bad or of inferior quality, and we were not allowed to buy toilet paper or sanitary napkins, or any other daily necessities from the store in the labor camp. Prior to the 2011 Chinese New Year's day, in order to make money, the labor camp allowed the practitioners to buy some seasonal items, but what they sold us were moldy longans at a premium price, and what we ate were longans that had gone bad.
The above are just a few examples of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in this labor camp.