(Minghui.org) Located in Qi County, Shanxi Province, Jinzhong Prison is the main facility in the province where wrongfully convicted male Falun Gong practitioners are detained.
All persecution directives are issued by the prison’s “Education Department.” Falun Gong practitioners who refused to admit guilt or renounce their faith were denied visits with their families and not allowed to call or write to them. Their families weren’t allowed to make cash deposits to their commissary accounts, which limited the practitioners’ ability to purchase daily necessities or extra food. They could only get toilet paper and soap. Some practitioners complained to the prosecutor overseeing the prison but never received any response.
When practitioners are first admitted, they are held in the area for new inmates on the third floor of the Fourth Division, which occupies a new high-security, four-story building. The first floor is vacant. The second floor is for regular inmates, and the fourth floor has plenty of solitary confinement cells.
Guards assigned to the “Education Department” would talk to the practitioners shortly after they were admitted. If the practitioners refused to renounce Falun Gong, they would be given extended “training.” When the initial “transformation” campaign failed, the guards would transfer the practitioners to the solitary confinement cells.
Zhou Dongyan, the Fourth Division instructor, has been actively participating in the persecution. He often forced the practitioners to stand for long hours for several days in a row or instigated the inmates to beat them.
Shortly after Mr. Hou Lijun was admitted to the prison to serve a ten-year term, Zhou deprived him of sleep for four days straight, while eight inmates took turns watching him. Zhou beat Mr. Hou himself, saying that he had used all kinds of torture methods on Falun Gong practitioners.
Around April 20, 2025, a guard named Wu Tianyu from the Beijing Prison Administration Bureau went to Jinzhong Prison to train the guards how to better “transform” Falun Gong practitioners. In late April, another eight guards came from Beijing to join the “training.”
Also in late April 2025, the prison displayed banners that said “Exposing and Criticizing Falun Gong” in the meeting rooms. In May 2025, the official campaign to force detained practitioners to renounce their faith was set in motion. All newly-admitted practitioners were taken to the solitary confinement zone on the fourth floor and forced to stand around-the-clock while the inmates pushed them around, beat them, and pepper-sprayed them. Even practitioners who had already been assigned to regular divisions were taken the fourth floor to be “re-educated.” In early July, staff members from the Shanxi Province Prison Administration Bureau went to Jinzhong Prison to hear updates about the “transformation” campaign.
The prison’s “Education Department” later expanded its brainwashing campaign to more practitioners. Those who refused to do their “homework” or write statements to renounce and denounce Falun Gong were taken to the solitary confinement zone for a month-long “boot camp.” Those who had been forced to renounce Falun Gong were still required to write thought reports every month.
The above-mentioned Mr. Hou was held in the 15th Division. In May 2025, guards ordered the inmates to beat and verbally abuse him, as well as pour urine on him, because he did the Falun Gong exercises. When he went on a hunger strike to protest, the guards force-fed him. They left the feeding tube in and only changed it every 15 days. Later, to increase his suffering, they inserted the feeding tube into him every day.
Shanxi Province: Torture Campaign to Transform Falun Gong Practitioners in Jinzhong Prison
Falun Gong Practitioners Tortured in Jinzhong Prison, at Least Nine Tortured to Death