The group leader of the inmate guards, Wang Xiaohong, was sentenced to three years of forced labour for drug trafficking. Prison guard Yu Fangli has taken a 400 yuan bribe from Wang Xiaohong. Wang is used for torturing Falun Gong practitioners. In exchange for her services and for the bribe, Wang Xiaohong can even use her mobile phone to organise drug trafficking from the forced labour camp hospital.

The police tied one female practitioner 14 times--until her shoulders were bleeding. They also said, "If you don't transform, we'll drive you insane!" In the Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp, practitioners are routinely beaten and shocked. One female police officer told the Falun Gong practitioners, "When you come here, you come to the Palace of the King of Hell."

My name is Wang Liren. I am 52 years old, and I am a Falun Dafa practitioner who started practising in 1995. On January 31, 2003, I was arrested when distributing truth-clarification materials telling about the persecution of Falun Dafa. In the police station, they cuffed my hands and feet to a metal chair and punched my head with their fists. The police van driver used an electric heater to scorch my face. After being tortured for one day and one night, I was sent to the Administrative Detention Centre in the Shenyang City Police Department, where I was kept for 37 days.

"They stuffed a dirty towel into my mouth then started to drill into my armpits and behind my knees with a homemade drill that consisted of a hard plastic tube with four cuts at the end. They kept drilling this hard plastic tube into me for more than ten minutes while I was screaming with pain. When the policeman became tired he called in another assistant to keep drilling. The assistant thought I was dead, I heard him saying he could see the white bone through a hole they drilled under my arm."

At the Dalian Labour Camp in Liaoning Province, Falun Gong practitioners are brutally tortured. However, because information from inside is tightly blocked, outsiders barely know anything about the true situation.The police force practitioners to do hard labour twelve to sixteen hours a day and forbid them from talking to each other. Police direct inmates to persecute those very determined practitioners. If they refuse to be "brainwashed," then they are forced to stand for extended periods of time without moving. Some were forced to stand for six days straight.

While in detention the police tortured her relentlessly. A once healthy elderly lady was turned into a person plagued with illnesses. The labour camp hospital diagnosed her illness as breast cancer. Not wanting to take any responsibility, the camp released her on medical parole. After Ms. Wang returned home, she went to her work unit to ask for her pensions. However, her work unit colluded with the "610 Office" and heartlessly again sent her to labour education.

For example, practitioners could not talk, nor could they move their lips, close their eyes, cross their legs, or even have their legs touching each other when sitting. They were rarely allowed to use the toilet during the work time and they had no more than 10 minutes to use the facilities, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. If they had an urgent need to use the toilet, it had to be authorised by the room leader, the team leader, and the Captain. There was no time allowed for bowel movements, which was said to be "too time consuming." Practitioners had to wait until bedtime. As a result, many people developed constipation, haemorrhoids and were in great pain.

Dr. Wang Xiaodong is a Falun Dafa practitioner from Daqing City and a surgeon at the County Chinese Medical Hospital. Before he practiced Falun Gong, Dr. Wang suffered from chronic tuberculosis and hepatitis B. Dr. Wang's health quickly returned to normal after he started to practice Falun Gong in October 1998. Since then, he has conducted himself strictly according to the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance." Always thinking of others before himself, he was admired by his colleagues.

I was sent to a forced-labour camp. I was not a Falun Gong practitioner, so I was not treated as harshly as they were, but I had the opportunity to witness the brutal torture of many Falun Gong practitioners, and I also had the chance to meet with some steadfast Dafa practitioners. Chen Jingru, nearly 40, is gentle, quiet, restrained, and able to endure hardships. I have a very deep and good impression of her because of the way she carried herself.

Due to the brutality of their methods, the tube didn't always feed into the oesophagus but also went down the trachea. This vile method of torture damaged her lungs tremendously and caused her to cough constantly. She suffered from extreme pain in her lungs and grew thinner and thinner. To shirk their responsibility, the detention centre claimed that she had contracted tuberculosis, and asked her family to obtain a medical parole for her and take her home. From that time on her health declined to the point where she could hardly walk.

Labour camp police took Dafa practitioners, mostly female, to two different tents sites for torture every day. The police officers dug a hole about 2.5 feet by about 5.5 feet deep in a vegetable field. In an attempt to persuade the practitioners to give up their belief, they would throw one practitioner in the hole and threaten to bury her alive. They even buried some Dafa practitioners up to their necks, leaving only their heads above ground.

Ma Xujun has been at the edge of his life many times, but the Jiamusi City Police Department refused to release him. After family members' many attempts to secure his release and under pressure from the strong protest and condemnation of many people seeking justice, on the night of December 26, 2003, the Jiamusi City Police Department sent Ma Xuejun home on a stretcher, put him down, and left, shirking the responsibility for his condition. At that time, Mr. Ma had become unable to move or speak. The long-term hunger strike made him like a skeleton.

The prison guards kept telling her family members how Ms. Hu was "against the government" and how well the forced labour camp treated her by giving her injections of albumin and spending more than ten thousand Yuan on her in medical expenses, and so forth. At that time, Ms. Hu Yuehui could not remember anything at all, but only could say "It is not wrong to practise (Falun Gong) exercises!" Her family members thought what the guards said was true. As soon as her family members left, the guards placed her in a storage room in the hall where nobody could see her.

Jilin Prison, also known as Jilin No. Two Prison, holds male practitioners sentenced there for more than ten years. The prison authorities have used the most inhumane tortures to persecute the practitioners. The following examples are tortures inflicted on Falun Gong practitioners -- not on the common prisoners. The common prisoners are bribed and pressured with money, privileges and bonuses to torture the practitioners to write the "four statements."**

Since December 2002, authorities of the Sanshui Labour Camp in Guangdong Province have been following the orders of the "610 Office" and using all means to force Falun Gong practitioners to write the so-called "three statements" [statements denouncing Falun Gong and promising to give up practising it]. They also published the statements written by practitioners under pressure on the website of the "610 Office." Below is an account of a practitioner who went through such torture.

Caption Zhang carefully handpicked seven of the most ferocious and depraved prison inmates. She used reduction of their prison terms and upgrades to their meal and bed privileges to motivate this "elite group" to torture Falun Gong practitioners. I heard policewoman Ms. Mao saying, "Captain Zhang instructed us to keep this practitioner hovering between life and death. She doesn't know what pain is! You must remember: you will only get her to renounce Falun Gong when you drive her close to a mental collapse."

In June 2001, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Mao Qi, a laid-off worker from Zhoukou City's Cotton Mill, was detained after she went to Beijing to peacefully appeal for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong. Her mother was angry about her arrest, plus she was very ill. Later her mother passed away with a feeling of injustice in her heart. The political protection department of the Public Security Bureau, her workplace, and her neighbourhood administration office didn't allow Mao Qi to see her mother for one last time before she died.

This was a torture beyond human language. They put some medicine on me to continue their torture under the disguise of treating me. They again forced me to write the "four letters" which I signed under pressure. I now declare that it was against my own will and I was forced to do this. Afterwards, my heart was filled with sadness and sorrow that was beyond words. After that they didn't allow me to talk to anyone until August 2003. Staff member Li called me for a talk, and I told him that I had been tortured. He yelled at me "Who tortured you? Who witnessed it? If you don't accept our management, we will force you to!"

There are four sub-sections at the Sanshui Forced Labour Camp. The Fifth Brigade of the third sub-section is called the "Special Brigade," and it is mainly used for detaining Dafa practitioners. During the periods of December 3, 2000 to January 22, 2003 and March 23 to September 13, 2003, a torture chamber was set up at the second sub-section and used to torture Dafa practitioners. The torture chamber was inside a hidden, high-walled, two-story building with an independent courtyard and had a guardroom 50 metres behind it . It's hard for outsiders to comprehend the brutality of the torture that occurred there. There were scores of Dafa practitioners tortured and made to suffer greatly.

During her ten days of detainment in the labour camp, it is impossible for anyone to imagine how ruthlessly the labour camp must have tortured her. She was sent home when she was about to die. Two days after she was sent home she was dead. At the time of her death, Na was still detained in the brainwashing centre. The family asked the centre to let Na go home to see his wife for the last time. Even under such circumstances the "610 Office" and the Town government firmly refused.

Police Officer Yang kicked her lower back hard, and Police Officer Xia said to her while pointing at her, "We'll kill you to make you disappear!" Police Officer Liu Bin (formerly from the Fifth Team) said, "We want you to know that the cooking pots in the Labour Camp are made of metal!" [a chinese saying meaning police are tougher than practitioners].

The Jiamusi Labour Camp continually forces Dafa practitioners to perform intense labour, and most of the time the work goes beyond a regular working day. They did not discriminate about what kind of work they would force us to do, as long as it made them money. Recently they got a contract with an individual who sent us piles of dirty flax materials that could only be found in refuse piles. The labour camp forced us to use these dirty materials to make cushions for car seats, which would not meet any reasonable quality standard at all. They did not mind hurting consumers in order to make themselves a profit.

These false fronts can easily deceive the foreign media and investors and lead them to believe that the forced labour camp is a comfortable resort - with deer even! Behind these expensive false fronts, many Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured and murdered in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp. Imagine that Jiang Zemin's regime would spend a lavish amount of taxpayers' money to create a false impression that China's human rights have been improved so that it can lure foreign investors to the Chinese market, to evade worldwide condemnation and pressure to end the persecution, and to win the chance to host the Olympic Games, and, most importantly, to continue the persecution of Falun Gong.

At Xidayingzi Beishan, Chaoyang City, there was a new building constructed at a cost of 3.7 million Yuan called the "Comprehensive Education and Reform Building," which is actually a brainwashing centre where the labour camp chiefs Yu Wanchi, JinYucheng, Cheng Hetian (assistant), and special division chief Qi Yongshun commit countless crimes....On October 22 and 23, 2003, police along with four prisoners took turns torturing and shocking practitioners with the excuse that they needed to "test the effectiveness of the new electric batons."

My blood pressure was very high and my heart was not good as well. My brain wasn't getting enough blood supply, and I was often in a semi-conscious state. I even lost consciousness and was in a serious condition. My complexion was dark, my lips were blue and I was emaciated. I had extreme oedema in my feet and legs, so bad that I could not even wear shoes. My feet and arms became black and purple from serious blood capillary haemorrhages after my feet and arms were handcuffed for a long period of time.

While in the hospital, the captain of my unit, Li Jirong, was transferred out and another woman named Li took his place. She came to the hospital and threatened me, saying, "You'll be released soon. We will exchange opinions with the Japanese Embassy. Even after you return back to Japan, we can still extradite you back to China." She also made other threatening remarks. Without the help of the Japanese government and overseas Falun Gong practitioners, I don't know what might have happened to me. I suppose I might be dying in the labour camp right now, or at least have to suffer a longer term of confinement.

According to Chinese law, a person who is not in agreement with a forced labour sentence can appeal within 60 days. At the time of their detention all Falun Gong practitioners appealed in writing, demanding to be set free unconditionally, but their requests were categorically denied....A staff member named Sui Ziqiang said, "We cannot help it. The higher authorities ordered us to do this."

On the morning of April 27, 2001, the Xingtai Public Security Bureau and the Special Case Investigation Group again came to Junshan's home. This time they did not find him at home. Not satisfied, they abducted his daughter as a hostage, even though neither Junshan's son nor daughter practised Falun Gong. Junshan's wife had to ask people who had connections with the police to secure the release of their daughter after more than two days of detention and another 1,000 yuan in extortion fees. But the harassment did not end there.

I remember one day, Li Jirong, the head of a division who was elected as a representative to the 16th Party Congress due to her "achievements" in persecuting Falun Gong, told me, "Don't think this is just a labour camp. Our labour camp also has a death quota! Don't forget that you are still a Chinese citizen, so you still have to follow the laws of China. You are no different from anyone else."

Jinzhou Labour Camp willfully extended the sentence of these firm Dafa practitioners, and has relentlessly tortured them: Shi Zhongyan, a worker from the Jinzhou Supermarket, was to be released from the labour camp in 2000, but his term was extended again and again because he refused to renounce his belief in Falun Dafa. He died as a result of the persecution on April 26, 2003.

Xuchang City in Henan Province is a major production centre for wig products in China. When the Henan Province No. 3 Forced Labour Camp was on the verge of bankruptcy, the labour camp abducted many Falun Gong practitioners and forced them to do slave labour making wig products for export. The labour camp survived and prospered this way.

The "Tiger Bench" torture uses a modified steel chair. The chair seat is a thick steel plate. The original chair armrests are modified with a rounded metal barrier. Both feet are tightly clamped into foot shackles under each front chair leg; a nylon rope is used to tightly tie up the person; the upper arms are tied tightly behind the back, both lower arms are forced to the front to reach armrests on both sides, then two hand straps are used to bind the lower arms to the armrests. The person is tied like this for long time, while tortured and brutally beaten.

Qu Yanlai, a Falun Gong practitioner who is currently illegally detained in Tilanqiao prison in Shanghai, has been on a hunger strike for over 400 days to protest the unjust persecution of Falun Dafa. The violent and frequent force-feeding administered by the prison guards has caused bleeding in Mr. Qu's stomach, and because of the violent nature of the force-feeding he is being temporarily detained in the Tilanqiao Prison Hospital.

The next day, these Dafa practitioners were forced to balance bottle caps on their heads. If the bottle caps fell off at any point, the police would beat the practitioners and slam their heads against the walls. Wang Kaiying suffered injuries to her head and a fist-size bruise. In the afternoon, these practitioners' had their hands cuffed and they were hung up by handcuffs to an iron rail. Their feet, far from the ground, were lightly touching a barely reachable wooden stool, which could be easily kicked aside. In this way, these Dafa practitioners were hung up for several hours

In Datong, we practitioners were intimidated and threatened. Our families were also implicated. We were followed, watched, illegally detained, brainwashed and even paraded through the streets to be publicly humiliated. Just for practising Falun Gong, some of us were forced to leave home and some were detained many times or penalised with heavy fines. Practitioners were detained in detention centres. The police in Datong Prefecture beat us brutally with police batons and plastic clubs. They put heavy iron chains (weighing several dozen pounds) around our heads and hands, and forced us to walk around the yard.

Of the total verified deaths of Falun Gong practitioners throughout the country, Weifang City accounts for the highest of any province to date. Of more than 100 female Dafa practitioners illegally incarcerated in the forced labour camp, some have been thrown into the First Women's Forced Labour Camp in Shandong Province, otherwise known as the "Living Hell" to these female practitioners who have suffered, and continue to suffer from the most appalling atrocities.

Some practitioners were subjected to additional persecutions such an extension of their jail terms, being subjected to further torture, and being forced to sleep in the corridor. Some people were suspended from the basketball stand, with their feet barely touching the ground. They hung there, rain or shine, all day long, except for mealtime and going to bathroom, until 11 p.m. They would be awakened at 6 a.m. the next day and once again suspended. This treatment continued for over 20 days and sometimes for up to three or four months.

The police abused the practitioners by forcing them to work, assigning them excessively high work loads, forcing them to work nearly 19 hours a day… The labour camp officials forbid practitioners to tell the truth, they forced practitioners to work excessive hours. They also forced practitioners to tell that they only worked for 6 hours a day if anyone from outside the camp would come to inspect.

Soon after the torture, he could not eat, his chest was congested and he coughed a lot. After the Chinese Spring Festival in early 2002, the staff in the labour camp brought him to a hospital for a checkup and found that he contracted pleurisy, tuberculosis and pneumonia. Later, he was brought to the Second Hospital of Daqing City, a hospital for infectious diseases, for treatment. At that time, he was very frail. Fearing responsibility for his death, the labour camp found a family member to take him out of the labour camp under the guise of "medical treatment."

When a reporter called the Zigong Police Department on 86-813-4702024 to verify the death of Li Xindi, a policeman confirmed that Li died last year at the labour camp, but he claimed that Li committed suicide. When asked why there was a hole in Li's head, the policeman said that was because Li knocked his head against the wall. But the policeman did not explain how knocking one's head against the wall would leave a hole in the back of the head..

Ms. Qu Guizhi was arrested and sent back to Shenyang's No. 5 Detention Center and suffered inhumane torture. About twenty days later she was taken back home and became bed-ridden. She suffered memory loss and became very slow to react. It was determined that the cause of her illness might be due to having been injected with unknown drugs.

In the end, He Guozhong wasn't even able to walk from his cell to the dinning hall. The police had to send him to the hospital. The examination found that one leg and one arm of his were full of pus, which kept flowing out. After coming back from the hospital, policeman Han Hongtao told us that one leg and one arm of He Guozhong's had almost become an empty shell.

In order to further devastate Dafa practitioners' physically and mentally, the guards did not allow Dafa practitioners to sleep or even close their eyes. Thugs were put on four shifts every day watching practitioners. Some practitioners were forced to sit on a small stool for all day and night for over a month. Some practitioners were sleepy and fell down to the ground from the stool. One practitioner was not allowed to close her eyes for five days and nights. Finally, this caused her to become schizophrenic.

New detainees and Dafa practitioners from the different brigades who are considered steadfast are sent here for brutal torture and forced brainwashing. The prison guards play tapes slandering Teacher Li and Dafa all day long. Whoever refuses to cooperate is brutally and continuously tortured with tactics such as the "Big Hang Up,"[1] being shocked with high voltage electric batons, having to squat with one's mouth sealed, and brutal beatings by criminal offenders.

Although the guards have established a "no beating and no cursing" rule, because of detained practitioners' firm resistance and outside practitioners' exposure of the guards' crimes on the Internet, they still do bad things secretly. Under the guise of "setting up a class" they added a name and changed the location of the persecution, but their lies, crazy beatings and verbal abuse remain the same.

In the spring of 2001, the Kaiping Forced Labour Camp telephoned the family to come and take Cui Yulan home. When the family went, they only saw the box of her ashes and the clothes and blanket that were being returned. They were not told how long ago she had died or the circumstances of her death. The prison police were afraid that details about their responsibility in her death would be exposed, so they secretly cremated her body without notifying her family.

Zhao Yuqing used an electric baton to electrically shock Qu Fengying, to force her into writing the Three Statements to renounce her belief in Falun Dafa. Custodian Tao Fuchang said at a conference, "Now there is a quota for the number of deaths of Falun Gong practitioners." Zhao Yuqing said at another team meeting, "If you don't wish to listen, we will arrange a few deep lessons. The labour camp has more than 200 torture devices."

The labour camp refused to accept Ms. Zhang becuase of her physicial condition. But the reasons behind their refusal reveal a chilling disregard for human life. Based on Jiang Zemin's persecution policy, each forced labour camp gets a "death quota", or "the number of Falun Gong practitioners a forced labour camp is allowed to have die in the camp." Each forced labour camp is also rewarded for making a Falun Gong practitioner renounce his/her belief in Falun Gong. The camp officials did not want to forfeit one of their death quota numbers for a dying Falun Gong practitioner without obtaining their reward from making her renounce Falun Gong.

Due to internal wounds and foot injuries sustained through beating and torture in the labour camp over a month before, Mr. Song had difficulty walking, could no longer work, and often coughed and experienced lung congestion. He was often in extreme pain and his health status was unstable. In November 2003, he was bed-ridden and could no longer stand up. His family sent him to the Jiutai hospital for treatment, but medicine did not help him. Six days later, Song Changguan died on November 12th.

Hui Yuexin, 23 years old, has been left with brain damage and is unable to move her limbs. She closed her eyes to take a rest and as punishment she was placed in solitary confinement. Policemen Li Yufang and Zhang Yi beat her violently and kicked her head. When they became tired they instigated criminals Wang Hongwei, Wang He, Yu Haiyang and others to beat Hui Yuexin. Hui lost consciousness and went into shock. When she regained consciousness, they placed her on a small stool, not allowing her to move.