(Clearwisdom.net) For this brainwashing class, unemployed people were brought in off the street to act as "hatchet men." Using all manner of excruciating methods, they inhumanly tortured Falun Dafa practitioners who had been arrested and brought to the brainwashing center. Professor Mengye Zhang was arrested and brought to this brainwashing class on May 18, where he suffered severe torture. A Dafa practitioner who was able to walk out of the brainwashing class where Professor Mengye Zhang was held described her own experience and the horrors that she witnessed. The following methods of torture were employed in attempts to force practitioners to renounce their belief in Falun Dafa.

1. Sleep deprivation

Practitioners were not allowed to sleep at night. By 12 o'clock midnight, Dafa practitioners were forced to read books that defamed Falun Dafa and to watch videos until morning. Some practitioners were deprived of sleep for 4 days and 4 nights.

2. Punishment by being forced to stand in the "horse step" position

Practitioners were forced to stand for 4-6 hours with one leg raised, thigh perpendicular to the body, and both arms held straight out in front of the chest. Practitioners were beaten on the hands and body during this period.

3. Submerging in Water, Attempted Drowning

Practitioners were handcuffed with their hands behind their back and their heads were pushed into a bucket full of water; or else practitioners' feet were pulled up to make their head fall into a bucket full of water. They forced practitioners to drink water and then immediately stuffed their mouths with rags without allowing practitioners to get a breath of air. Another torture was to repeat the above procedures in a toilet.

4. Force-feeding with intoxicating liquids or hot peppers

Practitioners who went on hunger strike were force-fed with copious amounts of wine and/or hot pepper water with soy sauce. Practitioners were first handcuffed and their mouths were forced open, sometimes with clothes hangers or even a toilet bowl brush; then the wine and hot pepper water was forced into them and their mouths were then stuffed with rags. Sometimes someone else would pull out practitioners' fingernails during the force-feeding.

5. Hot pepper sprayed into eyes and noses

Hot pepper water was sprayed into the eyes and noses of Dafa practitioners.

6. Covering with cotton bed quilts in extremely hot weather

It has been very hot in Guangzhou this summer, the highest temperatures reaching 39 degrees Celsius (over 102 degrees Fahrenheit). The tormentors in the brainwashing class bundled Dafa practitioners' feet and covered practitioners from the neck down with two thick cotton bed quilts for several days. They were released only once in the morning, for going to the toilet.

7. Other Cruel Tortures

Other tortures included the following: handcuffing practitioners' wrists, whipping them with iron scourges, beating practitioners with rods, grasping and pulling people by the hair; pouring water on practitioners who had passed out from being beaten, in order to awaken them for more beating; hitting practitioners on the head with a piece of wood for the whole night, pulling out fingernails with pinchers.

Sometimes, the persecutors in the brainwashing class would torture Dafa practitioners in an isolated room. Others could only hear the tragic shouting, and the sound of ambulances. Dafa practitioners who refused to give in under these excruciating tortures would be sent away and no one knew where.

Some of the practitioners arrested into the brainwashing class were brought there after serving extended sentences in forced labor camps; some were arrested from their homes and others were re-arrested after they published their Solemn Declaration (note: Solemn Declarations are public statements by practitioners who have been forced to sign documents renouncing Falun Dafa. The declarations state that they had complied with the evil against their will after extreme physical and mental persecution).

As a large coastal city, Guangzhou once had a lot of channels for people to know the truth, and therefore, in the beginning of the persecution, the evil was not as rampant as it is now. But under the pressure of the evil head Jiang, the environment of Guangzhou has become worse and worse. Among the practitioners recently persecuted to death, Yunjuan Hao was an example. We cannot permit our innocent fellow practitioners around us to be detained and persecuted to death. Master told us in "The Effect of Righteous Thoughts," "I have asked disciples to send forth righteous thoughts, because those so-called evil beings are in fact nothing. Yet because the old forces have taken advantage of Dafa disciples' mercy, the evil beings that are protected by the old forces have been deliberately persecuting, so what Dafa disciples are enduring is no longer just their own karma, but something they should not endure under the evil beings' persecution. Yet these evil beings are extremely base and filthy, and are not worthy of playing any role in the Fa-rectification." Master also told us in the "Fa-Lecture at the Conference in Florida, U.S.A.," "Let me tell you, all those who remain and that can persecute Dafa and Dafa disciples are due to our students themselves. Students who haven't taken sending forth the righteous thoughts seriously: the evil in the dimensions that you are supposed to shoulder and be responsible for has not been eliminated. That's the cause."

Please do all that you can to tell the practitioners who are being persecuted to use righteous thoughts to eliminate the evil persecution of themselves and of Dafa.

We hope that all Dafa disciples together will do well in the three things that Master has currently asked us to do (study the Fa well, send forth righteous thoughts, and clarify the truth), and help our kidnapped fellow practitioners to quickly leave the evil's den.

(For more examples of torture methods used in brainwashing centers and labor camps, see see http://www.geocities.com/transrefs/Torture-tr.html)