(Minghui.org) In order to execute the CCP's policy of forcibly “transforming” and persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, the Heilongjiang CCP Political and Legal Committee and the 610 Office established brainwashing centers at Wuchang, Hegang, Yichun, Mishan, Acheng, Qiqihar, Daqing, Mudanjiang, Qinglongshan in Jiansanjiang, and Jixi. Countless Falun Gong practitioners have been held and tormented in these facilities. Yichun Brainwashing Center has been especially brutal in its treatment of practitioners recently.

1. Description of Yichun Brainwashing Center

Yichun Brainwashing Center is one of the three such centers established by the Heilongjiang Province 610 Office to execute the so-called “three-year plan” to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. (The “three-year plan” is also described as “consolidating the battle to 'transform' Falun Gong practitioners from 2010 to 2012” internally by the 610 Office)

Heilongjiang Province includes 12 cities and one district. The practitioners arrested and detained in Yichun are from nine cities: Yichun, Jiamusi, Hegang, Shuangyashan, Daqing, Harbin, Mudanjiang, and Jixi. In addition, practitioners who work in the railway system, medical field, education system, the post office, forestry and mining, and the oil field and petrochemical industry are also detained there.

The Yichun Brainwashing Center is hidden on the fourth floor over the Xingxingsuo Karaoke Bar located at 122 Heping Street, Yichun City. The left side of the building is guarded by an armed police guard and there is a bath house on the right side. An old city government building stands across the street. The second and third floors of the karaoke place have iron gates. The door of the fourth floor is made of aluminum alloy with mesh wire. There are guards at the gate. There are about ten rooms on the fourth floor, and each room has four beds. The outside of the windows were welded with iron bars and some doors are closed.

 
The front entrance to the brainwashing center has no sign

Iron bars on the fourth floor windows

 
Bars on the fourth floor windows

According to the Minghui website's statistics, during the 22 months from the end of November 2010 to August 2012, at least 60 practitioners from nine cities in Heilongjiang Province were arrested and detained and tortured in the Yichun Brainwashing Center. Twenty-two male and 38 female practitioners were detained there from a few days to a few months.

The detained practitioners included attorneys, professors, doctors, nurses, teachers, cadres, laborers, retirees, and entrepreneurs, such as attorney Wei Liangyue; university professor Yao Kai; nurses Lu Yingchun and Liu Ying; teachers Tong Ying, Lu Jiajun, Ma Guiqin, and Wang Fujuan; cadre Wu Baoku; laborers Sun Hui, Sun Yanru, Wang Gang, Li Tao, Ge Baojun, Cao Jingdong, and Sun Yufu; self-employed workers Wang Xiuqing, Zhao Guohua, Zheng Hongli, Li Chunlin, and Wang Xiaomin; and retiree Li Shuhua.

Some of them were arrested at work. Others were arrested while shopping or at home taking care of their sick elders. Some practitioners had just finished long illegal prison terms and were detained at the brainwashing center by the prison, police station, and/or residential committee officials at the behest of the 610 Office.

2. How the Yichun Brainwashing Session Persecutes Practitioners

In order to please the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Yichun Center officials tried every way imaginable to torture practitioners.

First of all, the facility totally isolates its inmates from the outside world. The police guard the entrance day and night. Anyone who enters has to go through several checkpoints. The practitioners are searched and photographed as soon as they enter. Then they are held in separate rooms. All the rooms and the hallway are full of slogans and pictures that slander Falun Dafa. Each practitioner is closely monitored by two assistants. The practitioners cannot leave the room without permission. Even to go to the restroom, they are followed by the assistants. They are not allowed to meet with or talk to other practitioners. The goal is to make them feel lonely and full of despair.

Center officials force the practitioners to watch the CCP video that slanders Falun Gong every day and to write feedback afterward. The practitioners' every word and action are recorded by the assistants and reported to the officials. The instructors and officials meet every day to analyze the situation of each practitioner and decide which “transformation” plan to use and adjust their strategy.

In the beginning, the brainwashing session officials pretend to be very caring. They tell the practitioners that the food is even better than at home, that it is like living in a hotel with food and air-conditioning. They say one is very lucky to stay here compared to suffering in prison.

The “instructor” kept talking to them to get them to share their thoughts. They usually talk about family, work, life, and personal interests, none of it related to “transformation.” The “collaborators” usually talk about their own stories and show off how they contributed to Dafa, how firmly they insisted on their belief, and the “proud” history of how they suffered from persecution, getting arrested and beaten. In the end, they suddenly change the topic and ask about the result, hinting they were deceived. Some collaborators who were trained by the 610 Office can recite many Fa lectures. They intentionally quote out of context in order to make the practitioners have doubts about Dafa. They talk to the practitioners from morning to night in order to brainwash them.

When this doesn't work, they show their true face and hypocrisy. They threaten the practitioners with firing, stopping their paycheck and pension, forced labor, and imprisonment. They get violent and start to torture the practitioners brutally. They force the practitioners to stand for a long time and force-feed them. They also use both soft and hard methods. One group pretends to be kind and another threatens. Some encourage the practitioners to eat, send them water, peel their fruit, engage in small talk, and ask them to take a walk. Other yell at them, insult them, and threaten them with a few months to half a year of detainment or even prison if they still refuse to be “transformed.”

The brainwashing center personnel also take advantage of the practitioners' family members' anxiety to get the practitioners back home and deceive and confuse the practitioners' families and friends. They ask them to come to the brainwashing center to kneel down and cry, to yell at them or threaten to end their relationship or to get a divorce in order to force the practitioners to compromise.

Once some practitioners write the so-called guarantee statement to not practice Falun Gong—against their will under intense pressure—center officials will press them harder and harder and force them to sign a statement admitting guilt and repenting. In the end, they also force the practitioners to write an “evil enlightenment” statement and self-description to completely brainwash them.

3. Specific Cases

-Police Break Ms. Li Cuiling's Ribs, Ms. Du Xiuqin Still Detained

The brainwashing center used every tactic imaginable to persecute the practitioners, and many were forcibly “transformed” against their will. As soon as they returned home, they immediately published a solemn announcement on the Minghui website to declare that everything they said and did against Dafa was invalid. They will firmly cultivate themselves and put in double the effort to remedy the losses they brought to Dafa. Practitioners Li Shuhua, Kang Aifen, Du Xiuqin, Li Cuiling, and others did not compromise at all, even under such brutal torture.

Ms. Li Cuiling, over 40, is from Yichun. On June 27, 2012, she was arrested and detained at the brainwashing center. The officials did not allow her to sleep for over 40 days. Every day she was handcuffed or was forced to sit on the ground. The police kicked her ribs so hard that they broke. They also pinched her nose and force-fed her. The officials also told her husband to threaten her and transferred her to the Harbin Drug Rehabilitation Center in order to detain her further for forced labor.

Ms. Du Xiuqin, 50, is a retired day care worker in Shuangyashan City Mining Bureau. On June 4, 2012, she was also arrested and detained at the Yichun Brainwashing Center. She has been detained since then. The CCP personnel said they could not release her before the CCP's Eighteenth National Convention.

-Practitioners' Families Forced to Participate

Ms. Zhou Xiuli, over 40, is from Yichun. On June 15, 2011, she was arrested and detained at the brainwashing center. Her daughter just finished the college entrance exam and was forced to come to the brainwashing center twice to help “transform” Zhou Xiuli.

Ms. Yao Kai, 50, is an associate professor at the Information Technology Institute of Jiamusi University. On May 8, 2012, she was detained at the brainwashing center. At first her husband was allowed to stay with her so that he would put pressure on her and force her to sign her name on the “transformation” letter. When this tactic failed, they prohibited her husband from entering the center. They isolated everyone in the brainwashing center from the outside world and restricted any information from getting out. Yao Kai's husband, who had heart disease, went to visit his wife every week, traveling from Jiamusi to Yichun. He watched for Yao Kai outside the windows, but center officials did not allow the two to meet. They also monitored her husband.

Mr. Lu Jiajun was a teacher at Wangjiang Middle School in Jiamusi. He was taken to the center on May 15, 2012. His wife was forced to come and threaten divorce to try to get Mr. Lu to sign the “transformation” letter.

-Father and Daughter Arrested at the Same Time, All Three People in the Family Imprisoned

Ms. Sun Ruyan, 25, works in the transportation department at the Shuangkuang Mining Company in Shuangyashan, Heilongjiang Province. On August 16, 2012, around 8 a.m., she was deceived at work and was arrested. Her grandmother, grandfather, and aunt went to look for her and found out that she had been arrested and detained at the Yichun Brainwashing Center. Her father, Mr. Sun Hui, who works at the regeneration factory at the Dongrong Third Mine, Shuangkuang Mining Company, was also arrested and taken to the brainwashing center on the same day. Ms. Sun Yanru's mother, Hu Qili, had been illegally sentenced to four years in prison by a CCP court in 2009 and has been brutally persecuted in the Harbin Women's Prison ever since.

 
Sun Ruyan's father

Sun Ruyan and her mother

-Transferred to the Center after Lengthy Imprisonment

Mr. Zhang Xingye, 48, worked in the Eighth Team, Second Mine, Daqing Third Oil Retraction Factory. On April 18, 2012, he finished a 10-year prison term. (He was sentenced for practicing Falun Gong). But when his family went to the prison to pick him up, they were notified that he had been transferred directly to the brainwashing center at midnight on April 18 by Yun Hongbo from the “social stabilization office” in Daqing Third Oil Retraction Factory and Domestic Security Police.

Ms. Wang Liwen is from Yichun. On April 20, 2012, she finished serving 10 years in the Heilongjiang Women's Prison. On April 24, officials from the Jinshantun CCP Political and Legal Committee in Yichun broke into Ms. Wang's relative's home in Hengshan Forest Farm and took Wang Liwen to the Yichun Brainwashing Center. Once there, Ms. Wang had the symptoms of high blood pressure. The officials from the Political and Legal Committee took her back to the Hengshan Forest Farm and assigned a special person to monitor and follow her, restricting her personal freedom. Within a month, she had symptoms of a collapsed lung and had to be hospitalized.

Ms. Zhang Linwen is from Yichun. On June 13, 2012, at the end of her prison term (she had been illegally imprisoned at the Heilongjiang Women's Prison, the Harbin Drug Rehabilitation Center and the Harbin Qianjin Forced Labor Camp), she was taken to the Yichun Brainwashing Center by Zhang Hu from the Yichun 610 Office.

Mr. Cao Jingdong, over 40, is from Daqing. On August 23, 2012, he finished his term in Suihua Forced Labor Camp. But when his family members went to pick him up, they were notified by camp officials that Mr. Cao had already been transferred to the Yichun Center that morning.

Mr. Wu Baoku, over 60, lives in the Guanghua Community District, the Didao District, Jixi City. He was the former vice director of the Didao District Water Conservancy Bureau. On October 27, 2011, his seven-year term in Jiamusi Prison ended, but he was not allowed to go home. Instead, he was transferred directly to Yichun Brainwashing Center.

Ms. Niu Huijie is 50 years old. On June 1, 2012, at about 8 a.m., when she accompanied 70-year-old Ren Xingqin from Hebei, Hegang City, to visit Ren Xingqin's daughter, Jia Qiumei, at Yichun Brainwashing Center, Ms. Niu was also detained.

On June 2, in the evening, seven males and two females from the domestic security team of the Hebei Forestry Bureau, broke into her home and confiscated it. Later, they also arrested Niu Huijie's daughter (not a practitioner) and her fiance for interrogation.

-Relatives Arrested While Visiting Practitioners

Ms. Zheng Hongli is the owner of the Yichun Marble Factory. On June 29, 2012, she was taken to the brainwashing center. Her family went to the center to ask for her release. Ms. Zheng's younger sister was surrounded by three officers inside as soon as she entered the center. They searched her and took away her cell phone. Later she found a chance to run away. The brainwashing center officers threatened to send all the practitioners who were ever detained in prison to the brainwashing center.

Ms. Liu Ying, 44, is a nurse at Daqing People's Hospital. She ended up in the center on August 28, 2012. She went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. Her family went to the center to visit her on August 30 and brought her some clothes. Center officials not only did not let her family visit her, they also ordered them to slander Dafa and Master. When her family members did not cooperate and do as they were told, they were arrested. Ms. Liu's mother is 74. During the arrest, she almost fainted. Ms. Liu's younger sister was arrested and held in the brainwashing center for over an hour for trying to protect her mother and sister.

4. Yichun Brainwashing Center Officials

Most of those who work in the Yichun Brainwashing Center come and go furtively. Some of them even keep their place of employment a secret from their families. They also do not like to go out during the daytime but like to work the night shift. When it gets dark, they get energetic and don't want to go home. Even a high level official in Heilongjiang Province said, “They are a group of scum. The CCP likes to use those kinds of people and it will soon collapse.”

Gu Songhai, head of the Yichun Brainwashing Center: +86-13804536212 (Cell)
Lin Xiaoming, deputy director of Yichun City 610 Office, the head of the brainwashing center: +86-133045861381 (Cell), +86-13304586138 (Cell), +86-454-3688610 (Office), +86-454-3879397 (Office), +86-454-3883559 (Home)
Liang Baojin, 58, deputy head of the center: +86-13845813057 (Cell)
Yu Jingzhi, female, 57, a thug at the center, paid 1,500 yuan salary every month: +86-13936822054 (Cell)

Please refer to the original Chinese text for more names and telephone numbers.

(Notes: the materials for this article came mostly from the Minghui website.)