Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp Guilty of Relentless Human Rights Abuses

Details about Falun Gong practitioner Wang Yanfang: From May to October 2000, policemen from No. 2 Division shocked him using multiple electric batons until all of his skin was burned. This was done during a time when the whole Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp was divided into No. 1 & 2 Divisions. He never gave up. The police also tied him to the frame of a bunk bed with his four limbs stretched out and electrically shocked him for a long period of time. His face was tortured to the point of having become completely deformed. But his determination to stick with Dafa cultivation was not moved at all. Later, he was sent to a concentration team. He did the exercises whenever there was an opportunity, even in front of the team leader. The police were afraid and also upset. Policeman Xu Jianhua tortured him and instigated prisoners to help in the torture. They tortured him day and night, didn't allow him to sleep and didn't allow him to drink water, and subjected him to other mistreatment. During that period, Fang protested with a hunger strike, but no one cared about him; instead, they tortured him even more severely.

Around November 2000, the prison policemen sent him to the Second Team. After October the two original teams were dissolved and the original squadrons became a brigade. Due to the long-term torture, Wang Yanfang became numb and could not speak; for a while he didn't pay attention to anyone. The police and collaborators mocked him, calling him insane. It was around January 18, 2001 that his forced labour term expired. The forced labour camp authorities released him for being "mentally abnormal."

However, when he was at home, personnel from the local police station constantly harassed him. Around March 2001 he went to Tiananmen Square again to practise the Falun Dafa exercises. For doing this he was illegally sentenced to two years of forced labour, and then detained once again. Because he staged a hunger strike to protest the illegal detention, he suffered renewed, unimaginable, and inhuman tortures.

After he was sent to the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, one of his legs became severely numb, and he often suddenly lost consciousness and fell down. In spite of this, the police still forced him to take training. Policeman Liu Jinbiao told me in person that Wang Yanfang had been shocked, and had fainted and fell to the ground.

Recently, prison terms of certain Falun Gong practitioners at the Tuanhe Camp had expired. They include the sentences for Li Chunyuan, Yu Ming, Fan Yingwen, Lu Weidong, and Lu Mingqiang, whose terms were illegally extended for ten months in June 2002. Before a Falun Gong practitioner can leave, the prison police will force them to write a so-called "Transformation Statement" or "Guarantee Statement" [A statement to declare that he or she is remorseful for practising Falun Gong and guarantees not to practise Falun Gong again, not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, and never again associate with any Falun Dafa practitioners.]. To achieve this, they would use abuses such as shocking with electric batons, physical punishment, sleep deprivation, and other atrocities. In June 2002, when the forced labour camp extended the terms of 50 practitioners including Li Chunyuan, Lu Mingqiang, Lu Weidong, and Fang Yingwen, they even called together Teams 2, 3, and 5, and held an evil extension meeting.

After June 2002, Li Chunyuan, who had sued Jiang Zemin in 2000, courageously wrote a letter to the highest Prosecutor and Supreme Court, to sue and prosecute the criminals for their conduct in the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp. Li Chunyuan said that when he was in the West Building he was often deprived of sleep, forced to kneel on one leg, and to endure other abuses. The persecution he suffered was so severe that he almost collapsed. The prison police in the West Building once told him, "In the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, if you are not willing to be transformed you either die or end up crazy."

After Li Chunyuan sued Jiang in 2000, the personnel at the Camp became ferocious. They locked Li Chunyuan in a small cell and tortured him. Li Chunyuan has a mild disposition. More often than not he was very quiet in the small cell, which was actually a steel cage, but even so, the "concentration team" enforcers still made up an excuse and tied his whole body to a bed board for an entire month. It was an extremely hot summer. The heat was very difficult to endure while tied up in a narrow, and humid, small cell. He had to eat a hard steamed bun that was difficult to swallow. It is reported that polices in all teams had a standard saying for the steamed buns in the concentration team, "leave it outside for a few days and dry it in the wind before giving it to practitioners."

The prison police didn't dare let Li Chunyuan out of the "concentration team." The police in the No. 2 Team didn't dare to take him back either. At the end of the year 2002, Li Chunyuan was still locked in the steel cage. Every now and then the police in the No.2 Team took Li Chunyuan out to receive "assisting education" training during the day and then sent him back to the "concentration team" at night to sit on a bench. During the few months in the steel cage, Li Chunyuan filed a few impeachment letters and lawsuit complaints. One of those was to accuse the "concentration team" of detaining him five extra months without giving any reason. The concentration team police were extremely fearful and furious of anything Li Chunyuan wrote, even on a small piece of paper. The prison police confiscated it and looked it over, and also confiscated Li Chunyuan's pen and paper. At the same time, Li Chunyuan also wrote an impeachment letter to prosecute the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp authorities for confiscating the legal materials he previously submitted, because he never received a response to the prosecution letter he handed in a few months earlier. Because Li Chunyuan firmly and openly complained of the brutality of Tuanhe, the labour camp had to reach a compromise.

In November of 2002, policeman Ni Zhenxiong from the No. 2 Team promised Li Chunyuan that he would be bailed out for hospitalisation. The way to do this was to have the doctors of Anding Mental Hospital come to Tuanhe and diagnose Lin Chengtao and Li Chunyuan. Policeman Ni wanted to have Li Chunyuan "cooperate" in front of the doctors. Li Chunyuan dignifiedly and firmly refused this offer. The following day, when the doctor came, Li Chunyuan kindly clarified the truth of Falun Dafa to the doctor, and the facts of how he was persecuted; at last, he was diagnosed as suffering from "middle-degree retardation." It's said that Lin Chengtao was diagnosed with "severe retardation." After some time, people from the Forced Labour Bureau came and talked to Li Chunyuan, and said they were willing to solve this matter on the basis of mutual cooperation, and were planning to release him.

Written on April 20, 2003

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2003/4/20/48711.html