Torture at the Cangzhou City Brainwashing Centre in Hebei Province

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The Changzhou City Brainwashing Centre, known as the Cangzhou City Legal Education Centre, is located in the courtyard of an artillery regiment in the western outskirts of Cangzhou City. The brainwashing centre includes a one-story building and a house. The north side of the building is used to specifically detain Falun Gong practitioners. The house is used for offices.

(1) A Nazi Concentration Camp with Chinese Characteristics

Since the brainwashing centre was established in November of 2001 up through December 2004, more than 30 brainwashing sessions have been held and 235 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted. Around eight to ten practitioners are arrested and sent to each session. Many methods are used to torture them.

There are a dozen small rooms on the north side of the building. Each practitioner is locked in one room with two "personal guards" who monitor the practitioner 24 hours a day. There are two beds in the room and the guards take turns sleeping on one bed. They closely monitor practitioners' every move to deprive them of their personal freedoms. In the evening, practitioners are not allowed to turn off the light in their room and every window is fitted with iron bars.

Practitioners on the first floor are forced to watch or listen to video programmes that slander Falun Dafa. These brainwashing sessions try to make practitioners lose their reason and their human nature, so they will renounce Falun Dafa. The iron gate on the first floor is kept locked all day. Two guards take turns guarding the gate and no one is allowed to enter except the staff.

The 610 Office1of Cangzhou City is the main persecutor and controls the brainwashing centre. The people involved in the persecution include: Lu Runzhang, Head of the 610 Office; Li Dong, Director, and Li Yifeng, Deputy Director of the brainwashing centre. The professional "teaching staff" in charge of persecuting Falun Gong includes Zhu Changqing, Zhu Jinbo, Liu Zhenjiang, Yi Zhenwei, Chi Binglan and Wang Zhong.

(2) The Legal Education Centre is a Centre for Violating the Law

The Legal System Education Centre, the 610 Office, the police department, the sub-district office, the neighbourhood committee, work units and the police substations have deceived a lot of practitioners to get them to go to the brainwashing centre. They told them that they were having a meeting or going to a study session. Some practitioners were taken from their workplaces or homes without any legal procedures. Hui Feng, the Deputy Director of the Xinhua District 610 Office, indulges in arresting practitioners. He has had 19 practitioners taken to the brainwashing centre and has often harassed their families. As a result of Hui's harassment, a 70-year-old man had a recurrence of an old illness, and the practitioners' family members left home to avoid further persecution. The family was thus broken apart. However, the Chinese Communist Party still publicly states, "The Party has not given up hope of finding them."


A Centre that Violates the Law

At the brainwashing centre, practitioners are deprived of all their rights of personal freedom, while they are concomitantly tortured both mentally and physically. They are not allowed to talk to each other so they must use the toilet or go to the dining room only one at a time.

Lawyer Zhang Xinpeng was head of the "Transforming" Division. To persecute the practitioners, he fabricated lies, deceived and framed practitioners with fabricated charges, threatened, coerced and abused the law. When these methods failed, he asked collaborators2Wang Shuang and Han Yin and other former practitioners who assisted the authorities to disturb practitioners' righteous beliefs and righteous thoughts by distorting and slandering Falun Dafa. Then the "teaching assistants" of the transforming division slandered Falun Gong and distorted the facts and teachings of the practice, while using the sentiments of family members to threaten and coerce practitioners into renouncing their beliefs.

Other methods used to mentally persecute practitioners were forcing practitioners to read books that slander Falun Dafa, and repeatedly showing video programmes with fabricated and slanderous contents with the volume turned very high. Therefore, even if practitioners did not watch the programme, they are still forced to hear everything. During the whole process of persecution, the officials also try to persuade the practitioners to renounce Falun Gong.

When all these tricks fail to transform the practitioners, they then physically torture them. They pair up, with each pair taking turns being on duty for four hours. They force practitioners to stand still for long periods of time and deprive them of sleep, calling this type of torture, "stew the eagle"3. Practitioner Ms. Wang from Cangxian County was forced to stand still for three consecutive days and nights. She was also not allowed to sleep, eat and drink. One perpetrator kicked Ms. Wang in the stomach and slapped her face, causing her to lose control of her bladder and bowels.

Steadfast practitioners who hold hunger strikes are tortured with the "dead person's bed"4. They tightly tie practitioners' shoulders, chest, abdomen, thighs and legs to the bed so that they cannot move. Then they insert a feeding tube into the practitioner's nose. Practitioners are forced to relieve themselves on the bed because they are not allowed to use the toilet. As a result, the room becomes very foul smelling so that even the guards' helpers will not enter the room. There are three of these rooms where practitioners are tortured for only a few days to dozens of days consecutively. A practitioner who worked at a bank in the city refused to renounce Falun Gong and went on a hunger strike was tortured this way. They beat him until his face became swollen. His mouth bled and his clothes tore. They also bought two electric batons and installed an extra safety door to further persecute him. Doctors from the No. 2 Hospital were employed to carry out the forced-feeding. During the forced-feeding, food often entered into the practitioner's trachea causing him to cough vehemently before he lost consciousness. A medical examination revealed that this practitioner suffered heart and kidney failure because of these tortures. The hospital then issued a terminal illness notice and did not treat the practitioner. Only after the practitioner's family and the director of the bank where he was employed strongly requested that the practitioner receive treatment, did the hospital conduct an emergency treatment. Several days later, the practitioner's health was out of danger.

(3) Hypocritical Tricks

When a practitioner enters the brainwashing centre, he/she is "invited" to have a chat. The "teaching assistants" take turns talking to the practitioners around the clock using deceptive persuasion to express their sympathy. For a period of time, they appear to show concern for the practitioners. Practitioners who do not see through their pretension and mistakenly think they are good people, fall into their trap and do things that a practitioner should not do. Practitioners are continuously threatened with, "There's no way for you to leave the centre unless you are transformed. You will be sent directly to the forced labour camp where conditions are worse than they are here if you refuse to renounce Falun Gong." They use these threats to force practitioners to give up their beliefs and make compromises against their will. If the practitioners see through these tricks, then they resort to any conceivable means to torture them.

Every room in the brainwashing centre has a television set so the persecutors can deceive the practitioner's families. They tell the family members that the living conditions in the centre are good and practitioners are allowed to watch TV programs every day. As a matter of fact, the TV sets are used to show video programmes that slander Falun Gong. They repeatedly play these programs to confuse practitioners about what is right and wrong. They also ask collaborators to force their crooked understandings upon the practitioners and slander Falun Dafa to coerce practitioners to give up their beliefs.

Li Dong and Li Yifeng are two main staff members in the brainwashing centre. They talk very amiably. However, in slandering Falun Gong they make sarcastic and vicious remarks. Sometimes they openly slander Falun Dafa and propagate the philosophy of struggle advocated by the Communist party. Collaborators Han Ying and Wang Shuang worked in the centre for two years (now both have left the centre) and claimed that they had transformed such and such number of practitioners. They have committed grave sins. Some practitioners were not sober-minded and succumbed to the brainwashing. They then offered to be their accomplices. When their consciences became clear, they tried to leave. After they contacted practitioners and read Teacher Li's new articles and other Dafa materials, they realised their mistakes and repented. Then they published their solemn statements on the web site to declare that their words and deeds under forced brainwashing were null and void, and they continued practising Falun Gong.

(4) Accumulating Wealth by Unfair Means and Plotting against Each Other

The brainwashing centre extorts money from practitioners, who are forced to pay between 2000 to 4000 yuan as a "tuition fee." They deduct this sum from the practitioner's salary or extort it from their families. They also frequently extort money from the practitioners' workplace. If they cannot extort any money from the practitioners, their families or workplace, they will not release them.

While they persecute practitioners, they also scheme against each other for material benefits.

(5) The Persecution Still Continues

The persecution in the brainwashing centre is still going on. The long-term torture causes both physical and mental injuries to the practitioners and their families.

They have now changed the fixed brainwashing sessions, which used to last for 20 days with eight to ten practitioners in each session, to a rolling session. Now, every time one practitioner leaves the centre, another one is sent in. The brainwashing now runs all year round.

As soon as practitioners enter the gate of the brainwashing centre, they are separated from the outside world. Even those so-called teaching assistants (normally designated by the practitioner's workplace or family members) assigned to monitor the practitioners feel oppressed when they stay in the brainwashing centre. Therefore, they rotate once every week. Still, some teaching assistants have made many complaints claiming that they have no personal freedom.

However, for two consecutive years, this brainwashing centre was awarded the title of "Advanced Group of Hebei Province in Preventing and Dealing with the Evil xx." It was also awarded the first prize for its so-called merits in transforming practitioners. The brainwashing centre also dispatches staff members to take part in the so-called battles of intensive assault (an even worse form of persecuting Falun Gong practitioners), and to other parts of the country to help the local perpetrators persecute practitioners and pass on their experiences of how to transform human nature.

They also deceive, coerce and induce the leaders of the work places where practitioners work, their families and the teaching assistants and collaborators to become their accomplices in their work.

List of perpetrators at the Cangzhou Brainwashing Centre:

Address of the Cangzhou Legal Education and Training Centre:
Inside the Courtyard of the Artillery Regiment, West Outskirt of Cangzhou City, Post Code: 061000
Office: 86-317-2063230, 86-317-2063112

Lu Runzhang: Director of the Cangzhou 610 Office


Note

1. "The 610 office" is an agency specifically created to persecute Falun Gong, with absolute power over each level of administration in the Party and all other political and judiciary systems.

2. "Collaborators": Former practitioners who have turned against Falun Gong under brainwashing and torture. They are then made to assist in brainwashing and torturing practitioners.

3. Stew the eagle: Practitioners are forced to stand 24 hours a day continuously for over a month and are not allowed to sit down or sleep. The persecutors take turns yelling and screaming at them, scuffling with them and beating them during this time.

4. Dead Person's Bed: The practitioner's four limbs are stretched out and tied to the four corners of an icy-cold metal bed. The practitioner cannot move at all. He not allowed to eat, drink, or use the toilet. This treatment lasts from several hours up to more than a dozen days. This torture causes severe damage to the practitioner both mentally and physically. Many practitioners die from this torture. See illustration at

http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2004/9/1/51972.html.


Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/9/16/110513.html

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