The 1st Labor Camp of Hebei province is located in District Kaiping, the suburb of Tangshan. It is in the wilderness, far away from downtown. Tangshan has been known for its big earthquake. Today it brings wide attention again because of the practitioners in the female unit of the camp.
When the first group of practitioners was sent here last October, the living conditions was very bad. There was only one public lavatory with six toilets used by more than three hundred people. It is about a hundred meters away from the living area. It was difficult to get permission to go to the lavatory. It was even more difficult to occupy a toilet once the request was granted. The lack of water was another challenge. There was almost no water supplied except for the drinking water that was provided one bottle of hot water (less then 50 0C ) per day per person. Even worse, the drinking water could be stolen sometimes. The food was black steamed buns, dark, acid and shrunk. The work was tense and long. From 6:30 AM to 10 or 11 PM, except for the short breaks for food or to use the bathroom, people were kept working. Working in a brick factory for eight hours everyday was very tough. The job was to manually make firebricks that required so much strength; it would be even difficult for men. The real suffering for practitioners were not these hardships but being deprived of the right to practice and the inhuman torture.
Many practitioners have been tied up against trees because of reciting the articles of Master Li. You may already know the stories of how jail guards had practiced boxing on the practitioners' faces while the mouths of practitioners had been filled with bloody underwear, unwashed socks, or dirty cloth and then taped. How barbarous on-duty jail guards had beaten young women in there 20's and old men in there 50's. You may not know the following story of how the practitioner's on hunger strikes were required to march in step. The officers gathered some strong prisoners. They told these prisoners that they must teach the practitioners to march in step that day. If they refuse to do so, their prison term would be extended. If they could not make the practitioners walk that way, they would not be allowed to use the bathroom. Under such pressure, these prisoners lined up the practitioners and let out their resentment on practitioners. How could the practitioners who had been on long hunger strikes walk like in a parade when they could only barely walk? Under the commands of the officers, these prisoners pushed and kicked the practitioners forward and stomped on the practitioners when they fell down. The officers even came to do this to the practitioners too. The practitioners suffered such "training" for half a day. When He Jing, a young fashion model from Tangshan, came back to her cell, her legs were so swollen that she could neither sit nor squat. When she changed clothes, other practitioners were shocked to see her whole body covered with bruises that were not purple but black. Some kind prisoners burst into tears. In those days, the practitioners could be seen almost everyday tied against trees on the sports ground. They had on only thin clothes. They stood against the strong wind and suffered the physical abuse. However the most pain for them was not the physical pain but the pain in the heart that Falun Dafa had been claimed to be evil religion, the Master had been slandered and the holy right of practice had been deprived.
Duan Jingjing, a practitioner from Tangshan, was just twenty-three years old and worked in a hotel when she was put into the labor camp. She was tall and pretty and had a strong will in her delicate body. She had been arrested last year for going to Beijing to appeal. After she got out from the Tangshan detention center, she went to Beijing again. She was sentenced to a labor camp at the end of October last year after the second arrest. In the labor camp, she kept practicing no matter how cruel the torture she faced. You could imagine this caused her to be handcuffed and beaten more. In the last cold winter, she was handcuffed both hands on the bed every night for tens of days. She was only wearing underclothes in weather of -16 0C or -17 0C. She could sleep a couple of hours every night only after the upper body was frozen. During the daytime, she still was forced to work in the brick factory. Because of the handcuffing at night, she could not lift up her arms until the afternoon. Then she would be handcuffed again at night. She had been on a hunger strike. In the brick factory, far away from the labor camp, there were not any doctors from the labor camp assisting force-feeding. The officers ordered five people to force-feed her. One person was pulling her hair. Two pressed on her shoulders. A person sitting on Jingjing, who weighs only 80 pounds, held her nose. The last one would force open her mouth to pump the food in when she had almost fainted from being out of breath. The horrendous screams even made the other prisoners lose their appetites. The officers standing beside seemed to see nothing at all. Jingjing had been force-fed in this way ten times in the brick factory until she had to be sent to the hospital. Some officers even said that she should be left to die. Jingjing was sent back to the labor camp from the hospital on May 15th of this year. Since the officers in the labor camp didn't keep their promise and prevented her from practicing. Jingjing started her fourth hunger strike; again she refused water and food. She was brought to the farm every day. One day she had to stay under the hot sun and her request to stay under the tree was rejected. She fainted causing bruises and other injuries to her face and body. She didn't give in under this situation and continued to protect the Law with her life. At the end of June, she and some other practitioners were sent to the hospital again. Jingjing had been on a hunger strike for more than six months since last October. The lovely and quiet young lady has suffered so much in the labor camp through the cold winter and the hot summer. It is difficult for the common people to imagine what she went through.
Bai Yuzhi has been respectfully called Aunty Bai although she is less than 40 years old. She is highly admired by the practitioners and prisoners in the labor camp who know her. So many people have been moved by her and shed tears for her. Bai Yuzhi is very pretty, kind and strong in will. She had taken the class given by Master Li in Jinan City in 1994 with her husband and child. She started the practice site after she came back and became the assistant in the Jingjing County Assistant Center of Shijiazhuang. Almost every practitioner in the Jingjing County knows they have a good assistant. While she was staying in the Cangyan Mountain under government monitoring, even the administrator knew the reason that the large increase in the number of people visiting the mountain was because she was there. Many practitioners still remembered the scene that she held up the fist to encourage practitioners "Steadfastly cultivating Dafa with unaltered heart". When she was sentenced to a labor camp and was leaving Jingjing County, there were several thousands of people standing along the street with tears to see her leaving. They were not just practitioners but also normal people. Bai Yuzhi had been a standing member of Jingjing County Political Consultative Committee. She had been elected as an outstanding employee in the Industry and Business Bank several consecutive years. How can people understand and accept the fact that such a good person is sentenced to jail?
Bai Yuzhi and her husband were arrested when they went to Beijing for appealing. Four or five thousands Yuan were confiscated by the police. On the way back to her hometown, the police vehicle had to stop in Baoding City for repairs. She led tens of practitioners who were on the vehicle to get out of it and headed back to Beijing again. She walked from Baoding to Beijing without a penny in her pocket. Staying in open fields and getting some help from other practitioners, more than ten days later, she went back to Beijing again. In Beijing, she got 1,800 Yuan from her relative and distributed it to other practitioners, 100 Yuan per person. She only kept 100 Yuan for herself. Several days later, she was arrested again.
On November 3, she was sentenced to a labor camp and was sent to the Shijiazhuang labor camp. Most people in the unit she stayed in were prostitutes or had drug problems. Since she came, the whole unit of about 40 people changed from shouting and cursing to peaceful, just as the saying "The Buddha's light illuminates everywhere and rectifies all abnormalities". Since she kept practicing and had been on a hunger strike for the right to practice, she and three other practitioners, Qiu Liying, Zhou Ximeng and Li Qing, were transferred to Tangshen Labor Camp.
She was beaten and humiliated after she arrived at the camp. She had been handcuffed from the back for fifteen days and often bruises were seen on her face with a bleeding nose. One time an on-duty jail guard ferociously kicked her on the pubis just in front of the jail officer. She had bleeding in the lower body for over ten days and couldn't straighten her back. But she still kept a smile on her face while suffering the pains. She always said, "It's OK" when others who were so concerned ask her. She started the fourth hunger strike since May 15. In July she was transferred to Baoding and it is heard she is still on hunger strike until now.
Zhang Deyi, from Qihuangdao, among the three practitioners on the hunger strike who were sent to the hospital, has been sent to the mental hospital. After suffering the electricity treatment, she has been sent back home. No one knows where the other two practitioners Duan Jingjing and Qiu Liying are. Now the conditions here have improved a little bit. But there is still such a case that practitioners had been beaten a couple of days ago. There is still long way to go.
Falun Dafa Practitioners
August 2000
Note: We are practitioners. We have experienced such inhumanity and hardship just because we keep practicing. If you, people of kindness, read the story that such good and innocent people are suffering and are persecuted, is it clear who are making such terrible cases in the human history and who are sending the most kind people into the hell on earth? There is justice in Heaven and there is law in Earth. We are calling for justice. We are calling to stop such darkness caused by one hand.
A Practitioners Days in Labor Education
On October 18, 1999, my mother, my sister and I went from Shenyang to The National Appeal Bureau in Beijing to appeal. The police vans had been waiting there for a long time and many Falun Gong practitioners (including my mom and my sister) were thrown into the vans after being beaten up. Later the sign outside the National Appeal Bureau was also removed. We had no way but to go to Tiananmen Square to unfurl a banner that reads "Peaceful petition of Falun Gong practitioners" to call for the attention of the central government officials. I was arrested on October 25 and charged with organizing tens of evil cult followers to commit an illegal crime. (As a matter of fact, Falun Gong was claimed to be "evil cult" by the government in November 1999). I was sentenced to labor education for one year.
I was detained in Beijing Dongcheng Detention Center for two months and I witnessed many things. The International Excruciation Commission identified this center as "Number one Detention Center in Asia". The staff there tortured Falun Gong practitioners in many brutal ways. They slapped and kicked practitioners until they were exhausted. Practitioners were often punished to stand (which is a punishment. One has to stand there for a long time without being allowed to sit or move). They even pulled practitioners' hair to bump the wall. I once saw the police shackle a white-haired elderly lady and pull her back and forth in the hallway. Shenzhen practitioner Wang Hui was also in my cell and she fainted after being kicked by the guard Zhang Haiyan. However Falun Gong practitioners endured all these tortures silently.
I was transferred to the first Labor Camp in Hebei on December 28, 1999. This is a frightening camp to all people jailed there. The living conditions there are very poor. The main assignment here is to make bricks, which is a very heavy workload that requires 16 to 17 hours' of work a day. It's very inconvenient to use water and restrooms. What we had for meals were poorly cooked buns and rotten potatoes. Oftentimes we still felt hungry after the meal.
It's a common practice here to have all the people stand at once when one of us makes a mistake. On December 31, I was handcuffed because I practiced the exercises while I was punished to "stand". They handcuffed me for 3 days because I refused to admit that I was wrong. During the three days they handcuffed me sometimes to a tree and hung me in the air, sometimes on the basketball stands. They even beat me in a place where nobody else was present before they sent me back to the cell. Later they changed their strategy because I would always begin practicing Dafa once they removed the handcuffs from me. They sent two people to follow me at all times, so I had no way but to stop practicing. I had kept going on hunger strikes seven times because we were deprived of the right to practice and study the Fa.
Practitioners who came to the labor camp earlier had a much harder life here. Among them are Shijiazhuang [city] practitioners Zhou Ximeng (former assistant), Bai Yuzhi and Qiu Liying, Tangshan practitioners Duan Jingjing and He Jing, Langfang [city] practitioner Kang Shuxiang and Sanhe [city] practitioner Lu Fangchun. They not only went on hunger strikes for a long time but also were beaten and insulted. The staff in the labor camp even stuffed their mouths with dirty underwear, sanitary napkins and other filthy things when they were reciting Jingwen (Master's scriptures). Qiu Liying and Bai Yuzhi were punished to stand outside with only underwear on their bodies many times in the early morning of the freezing winter. Qiu was frozen numb and Bai was even frozen to a state of unconsciousness.
Falun Gong practitioners were often handcuffed to the trees because we asked for the right to study and practice the Fa. Later the staff dragged us in order to stop us from practicing. On June 21 this year we were reciting jingwen together and the staff couldn't stop us by just dragging us, so the guard Bao Junmei who was on duty rushed to us with two sticks in her hand and shouted to the staff, "stuff their mouths." She ran to Liu Guimei (from Langfang city), slapped Liu on the face and then lifted Liu's clothes to stuff Liu's mouth. Later the guards found that many non-practitioners who are labor educated here felt sympathetic towards us, so they could only ask a very few bad people to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. We were locked separately in different cells since July 22 and were deprived of the freedom to move about, not to mention to get in touch with each other. In order to create conflicts between non-practitioners and practitioners the labor camp placed pressure on all people and in the meantime restricted their freedom in and out. All people went through the summer in their cells. No one was allowed to eat in the dining hall or take a rest in the yard. The camp also forced non-practitioners to watch practitioners. Because most people know us very well and respect Falun Gong, the camp failed to cause conflicts. So they had to change their strategy. On August 23, dozens of guards broke into the cells and robbed jingwen from practitioners. Then each team spared one room to lock up practitioners who were on hunger strikes.
There were 50 people on the hunger strike at that time. There were 11 practitioners in my cell and they were Yu Shumei, You Zhijian, Wang Yuhua, Zhang Yongqing, Shi Yurong, Yang Fengqin, Guo Lixia, Yan Fengxia, Cao Guifang, Zhu Yourong and Jing Tian. The camp decided to force-feed us on August 24. To avoid being force-fed we held together and recited master Li's jingwen "Wucun". We pulled back whoever was pulled away. After a short while the guards Bao Junmei and Li Junqing came. They pulled and kicked us. I was pressed to the ground and got several kicks on my head. Because we were very weak due to long time hunger strike, two of us were pulled away. Yan Fengxia got her head hit by the doorframe and her clothing was torn. They dragged her on the ground after she was force-fed. The skin on her back was scraped badly and she wasn't able to sleep on her back and could only sleep sideways for several days. You Zhijian also got her clothes and feet dragged. Zhang Yongqing was banged into the heater and the guard Bao Junmei beat her to the ground. Zhang Yongqing was too weak to get up from the ground. The team head realized force-feeding was going with great difficulty so he came in and tried all means to persuade us. Later, seeing Guo Lixia also bumped into the wall to prevent being force-fed; the head had no way but to stop force-feeding. That night, the thunder and the lighting focused on and shocked the building of female teams.
On August 25, they kept force-feeding the rest of us. I asked others to hold me and I pulled Shi Yurong's arm tightly but the guard Li Junqing kicked them hard. We were weak physically because of the hunger strike, and I was carried away because I am the lightest. In the force-feeding room, I saw Zhang Yongqing being placed on the ground where had water and I was put in the bed. Several people pressed me. Shortly after I was force-fed and sent back, Yang Fengqin was also pulled back. Yang's legs were badly damaged. The skin on her heels and knees was gone and she couldn't even stand up. Guo Lixia also got some injuries.
Now they began to give some of us intravenous injection (Yan Fengxia, Shi Yurong, Zhang Yongqing and Jing Tian in the hospital' men's cell). If we do not eat after injection, then the next step, we might be sent to the mental hospital for electric needle treatment. We know Zhang Deyi just got out of there. We don't know Qiu Liying and Duan Jingjing's whereabouts after they were sent to the hospital.
We ask the government to restore the reputation of Master Li Hongzhi, to release all detained practitioners unconditionally and to restore the legal status of Dafa.
(Bai Yuzhi from Shijiazhuang [city] and Miao Peihua from Jinan [city] who were transferred to Baoding labor camp from here are still on hunger strick. They don't have family members to take care of them and I am very concerned about their situation.)
Dafa Practitioners in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province
September 2, 2000
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