Inside the Labour Camps

  • Announcement by China Mental Health Watch: Investigating Mental Torture and Misuse of Mental Institutions in the Persecution of Falun Gong Practitioners in China

    Ever since the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners began on July 20, 1999, the media and human rights organisations around the world continuously reported on the Chinese Government's cruelty towards Falun Gong practitioners, including psychiatric abuse. According to incomplete data, about 1,000 healthy Falun Gong practitioners were forcibly sent to mental institutions, and many were forcibly injected with psychotropic drugs. They received forced electro-shock and some were tied up and force-fed for long periods of time. At least 10 practitioners died from this type of maltreatment. Many of these practitioners were held in hospitals for as long as two and a half years. At least ninety mental institutions in China participated in this particular part of the persecution.
  • Practitioner Xin Minduo's Personal Account of Being Severely Persecuted (Photo)

    It is very risky for me to write this letter, and I am not writing for my personal gain. I wish to let you understand the truth about the persecution. After this tribulation of being in the labour camp, I went back to my workplace. I saw the fear of my supervisors of being implicated. Also, my colleagues cursed me, which hurt me deeply. I see the twisted hearts of the people who are deceived by the lies. These lies only hurt those who believe in them. There are also many people who know the evil of this persecution. They appear to be very apathetic. Nowadays, some Chinese really do not understand people who insist on defending the truth with their lives.
  • Non-Practitioner Witness: Falun Dafa Practitioner Ms. Li Shumin Dies As a Result of Persecution

    The Dafa practitioners that I know are all kind and wise. I have seen the persecution against practitioners. You could say that it was brutal murder. I think there must be a lot of practitioners being detained across the country, and there must be a lot of people like me being sentenced to forced labour, jailed or detained together with Dafa practitioners, and there must be a lot of policemen or judges who have handled cases dealing with practitioners. We are all witnesses to this persecution against Dafa practitioners. No matter how the persecutors have been beautified on TV or in the newspaper, with their crimes being covered up, and no matter how they deceive with lies people who don't know the facts, and defame the founder of Falun Gong and his practitioners, everything will one day be exposed and the facts will be revealed.
  • Jiang Zemin's Persecution Against an Entire Family of Dafa Practitioners: Father and Son are Tortured to Death in the Chaoyanggou Forced Labour Camp

    After March 5, 2002, Falun Dafa practitioners from Changchun City successfully tapped into a cable TV system to broadcast the truth about the abuses occurring throughout China. The police conducted large-scale arrests throughout the Province. More than 5,000 practitioners were arrested in Changchun City alone. A perpetrator of the persecution, Wang Yunkun, went to the Chaoyanggou Labour Camp on April 6 to arrange for the purchase of large quantities of electric batons, torture devices, monitoring equipment and electrified wire nets. The Financial Bureau also went to the labour camp and allotted more funds to build buildings and to give bonuses to the police. Ever since then, the Chaoyanggou Forced Labour Camp has become a concentration camp specializing in the persecution of Falun Gong.
  • Falun Dafa Practitioner Mr. Huang Xiangwei on the Verge of Death after 100 Day Hunger Strike in Changlinzi Forced Labour Camp

    In an attempt to force Mr. Huang to renounce his belief in Falun Dafa, the police in Changlinzi Forced Labour Camp took turns jogging while dragging Mr. Huang, who was already paralysed and in a weakened condition, on the ground in the courtyard. Mr. Huang's pants were soaked in blood from this torture. Afterwards, Mr. Huang started a hunger strike to protest the torture and his illegal incarceration. As of March 27, 2004, Mr. Huang has been on the hunger strike for nearly 100 consecutive days and is now on the verge of death.
  • Practitioners Forced to Do Slave Labour and Exposed to Environmental Contamination at the Qingpu Female Forced Labour Camp

    During that time the work was to connect light bulbs. A practitioner had to link eighteen small light bulbs together with metal clamps, which meant connecting two wires for each section. The goal was one and a half bags, or connecting many sets of a total number of 4,800 light bulbs daily. Many people's hands became deformed, finger-nails broken and some suffered from stiff finger joints or tendonitis. The practitioners were not allowed to sleep until the goal was reached. Meanwhile, the captain and monitors accused them of being lazy.
  • The Unwarranted Persecution of Dafa Practitioners in the Female Prison in Heilongjiang Province

    The fourth team police deprived the practitioners' rights to phone calls, meet with visitors and purchase necessities. They forced all of the practitioners to refer to themselves in the third person as "criminals" when requesting to make phone calls, etc. But since Dafa practitioners are not criminals, they refused to do so, and in this way their requests were denied. When their families came to visit them, the police lied to them, telling them that the practitioners did not want to see them and sent them away.
  • Exposing Shocking Slave Labour Practices Inside Chinese Labour Camps (Part II)

    Guard Shen Jianwei from the No. 3 Labour Camp often said, "A while back, when the labour camp was short on funds and was about to be shut down, many Falun Gong practitioners became available. The government allocated 20,000 yuan [$2,416 USD] to force each practitioner to renounce his belief in Falun Dafa." The labour camp spent eight million yuan [$966,561 USD] worth of government funding to construct residential buildings and encourages the guards to persecute these practitioners. Right now, the labour camp is "buying" Falun Gong practitioners from other places for 800 yuan each to use as slave labourers, to increase the volume of products for the labour camp.
  • Story Behind Making China's "Sanitary" Chopsticks -- Exposing Slave Labour Practices Inside Chinese Labour Camps (Part 1)

    We were escorted to the Department of Dispatch for Forced Labour Personnel in Beijing near the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Daxing District. Several days later, we were asked to do the work of hand-wrapping disposable chopsticks. Although the packaging was labelled "sanitary" it was not sanitary at all. All the inmates including those who had hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases had to do this job. We were not asked or allowed to wash our hands before working. In a room crowded with about 40 people, the chopsticks were piled all over the floor and on the beds. The room was filled with sawdust. The sanitary conditions in the Department of Dispatch were extremely poor. We were escorted to the Department of Dispatch for Forced Labour Personnel in Beijing near the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Daxing District. Several days later, we were asked to do the work of hand-wrapping disposable chopsticks. Although the packaging was labelled "sanitary" it was not sanitary at all. All the inmates including those who had hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases had to do this job. We were not asked or allowed to wash our hands before working. In a room crowded with about 40 people, the chopsticks were piled all over the floor and on the beds. The room was filled with sawdust. The sanitary conditions in the Department of Dispatch were extremely poor.
  • Xinjiang Tebian Electric Corporation Teams Up with Changji Forced Labour Camp to Make Products with Slave Labour

    This illegal TBEA workplace is poorly set up and thus the detainees are continuously exposed to dust and other pollutants. They produce the parts for the final products, but do not often have the tools or know-how to do it well. Thus the products would not pass quality control in a normal workplace, especially since the raw materials used are scraps and waste materials from TBEA. It is hard to imagine what kind of trouble products assembled under such conditions will bring the buyer. However, TBEA does not care about the suffering of the detainees, the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, and the inferior quality of the products, they only wish to continue to increase production to receive more and larger orders and make big profits.
  • Practitioners Forced to Package Contaminated "Sterile Chopsticks" in the Handan City First Detention Centre

    On January 16, 2003, the police guards brought us returned chopsticks that needed to be repacked. Once we opened the gunnysack, a foul odour came out of it, which made it hard for us to breathe. Those chopsticks had been packed, but due to the dirty and humid environment, they had become mildewed before they were shipped. Peeling off the moldy packaging made the conditions in the cell worse, as there were no sanitary equipment or procedures. Many people were allergic to it, with symptoms of a rash on their face and body that was too itchy not to scratch, but they could not stop working.
  • Masanjia Forced Labour Camp - Wrecking Lives and Destroying the Human Conscience (Part II)

    A female Falun Gong practitioner who survived life in Masanjia said, "In Masanjia, the most evil part is not the physical torture or humiliation -- people can easily tell that those are evil. The persecutors do not always use such overt tactics because they are also afraid (of being exposed, etc.), so they wait for the right time to do even worse things." "The most evil part is they use both persuasion and threats to destroy practitioners' minds and spirit.
  • Depraved and Immoral Places Seen in Broad Daylight: Exposing Prisons in Shenyang City that Persecute Falun Gong Practitioners (Photos)

    After holding hunger strikes some Falun Gong practitioners were sent to the Shenxin Prison to be force-fed. At the end of 2002, a Falun Gong practitioner named Ms. Jing Cai, 31, was brought there from the Shenyang City Detention Center to be force-fed. She almost died because the tube was pushed down her trachea and stopped her breathing causing her to almost suffocate to death.
  • Belated News - Dafa practitioner Mr. Wang Shubin is Tortured to Death While Detained in the Sanshui Forced Labour Camp

    While Sanshui policemen persecuted Wang Shubin without a shred of conscience, they extorted money from his family, by threatening to kill their son....But his body was abused so badly and had lost its regular shape. His weight decreased by more than 35 kilograms [77 lbs]. After the perpetrators had used up all means to torture Wang Shubin, they finally released him home when he was on the verge of death. The authorities assigned local "610 Office" personnel to continue to monitor him.
  • Masanjia Forced Labour Camp -Wrecking Lives, Destroying the Human Conscience (Part I)

    Masanjia Forced Labour Camp, also called the "Ideology Education School of Liaoning Province," is located in a suburb of Shenyang City, and is known worldwide for its forced-brainwashing techniques. Over the past four years and seven months, from July 1999 to February 2004, at least 99 practitioners were murdered there because of their belief in the universal principle of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance." Their ages ranged from 27 to 65 and majority of them were only between 31 and 39 years old.