By Practitioner Zhang Hongxu from Sichuan Province

(Clearwisdom.net) (Continued)

Part 1: http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2005/9/4/64569.html

3. "Education Division" is in fact a "torture" division

On November 20, 2000, a so-called "Education Division" (No.7 Division) was established that specialized in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. Tian Xiaohai was appointed to be the division head. There was only one team in the division then. We were transferred there on the same day. Many practitioners from other teams were transferred there, too. Sixty practitioners were in the division. To supervise practitioners, two or three drug offenders were assigned to each practitioner as "personal cangues." The environment became more severe. The following prisoners were on duty in the Education Division (During 2001-2003): Yang Jianguo (in his 20s), Hu Taiping (from Peiling), Qin Jian, Duan Wei, Wang Jianpeng, Liu and others.

Right in front of the Education Division building was a square field, surrounded by four to five-meter high stone walls on three sides. With the Education Division building erected on the fourth side, one felt like he was in a big pit when standing in the square field. It is used as a place to brutally persecute practitioners. In 2002, as many as 80 practitioners were held there.

(1) Force-feeding through a tube in my nose made my face swell up; beatings knocked out several teeth

As soon as we were sent there, they forced us to sing songs. Those who refused to sing were punished by having to stand straight for long hours, from 8:00 A.M. to 12:00 A.M., sometimes even until to 3:00 A.M. (Sometimes we were even forced to stand during meals.) We were forced to stand on the open field during the daytime and to stand in the prison cell during the night. One week later our legs were swollen.

After March or April 2002, we were forced to learn new songs that praised the evil CCP and the police. The drug offenders Wu Jian, Wang Jun and Chen Jun were assigned to teach the songs. Wu Jian even wrote a song to slander Dafa and to promote "brainwashing by force," which practitioners were forced to sing around May 2002.

During holidays, the labor camp would put on performances and forced practitioners to sing or give a performance. The drug offenders would make programs that slander Dafa to earn additional merits. Guard Ye Hua was in charge of planning and rehearsals. He was also in charge of the broadcasts in the Education Division that slandered Dafa and forced practitioners to write articles.

When the evildoers forced practitioners to write the Three Statements, they also forced the practitioners to write down things such as "I got help and education from the education cadres" and "It is the education officers who saved me" and affix their thumbprints on the statements.

On May 10, 2001, World Falun Dafa Day, we started a group hunger strike to protest the formation of the specialized division to detain and torture practitioners. Guards started force-feeding and brutally beating us if we did not cooperate, saying they would do force-feed three times a day. On May 14, Gu Liangjun, Tan Hongyi and I still persisted in a hunger strike. Other practitioners were compelled to resume eating after being brutally force-fed. Prison doctor Chen Jianping had inserted tubes through their noses. At 8:00 or 9:00 P.M., the inmate on duty Yang Jianguo took me to the duty office. Police officers Li Cunlun, Chen Jiao, He and another prison doctor were already there. Education section head Tian Xin asked, "Do you want to eat?" I said, "As long as our request is not granted, I will refuse to eat."

Tian Xin was drunk and his eyes were bloodshot. He forced me to squat and told me, "I just want to beat you to death." Then, holding my collar with both hands, he shook me back and forth, yelling, "I'll beat you to death. I'll beat you to death!" I couldn't breathe and had to pull his hands off me. He totally lost control. While holding my collar with one hand, he punched me in the head with the other.

My face, eyes and forehead were swollen. Several of my front teeth were knocked out. They broke off deep inside the gum, so parts were still attached to the gums and did not immediately come off, but dangled there. My nose and mouth kept bleeding, and blood flowed into the clothes on my chest. I felt dizzy and weak.

Even when I was badly hurt, two prison doctors still force-fed me. Yang Jianguo and a few other prisoners forced me into a chair. They inserted the feeding tube through my nose. Blood immediately covered the tube and dripped along the tube. They injected a powdered milk mixture into the tube. After two syringes, I felt dizzy, had difficulty breathing and was unable to talk. I was at the brink of death. After they finished, my face was covered in blood. Guards told Yang Jianguo to clean up my face and made Yang and Li Cunlun send me back to the cell, where the broken teeth fell off.

That night at around 10:00 P.M., when other inmates had already fallen asleep, Tian Xin, guard He and Wu Tao dragged me to the Xishanping Hospital. The next day doctor Gao Xiaohong instructed the inmates to tie me to a bed, with both hands and legs stretched out. I was given an infusion and wasn't sent back to the Education Division until May 30.

The day prior to losing teeth from the beating, the female practitioners in Maojiashan Labor Camp held a group practice in the open field and for that suffered brutal beatings by the inmates. My sixth aunt Fu Rufang was beaten on the ground. She was stomped on and dragged backward and suffered the torture of "Carrying a Sword in the Back" [The practitioner's hands are tied behind his back with one hand over the shoulder and the other hand against the lower back]. This severely injured to her left shoulder and resulted in pain and swelling for over two weeks. Half of her shoulder was covered with bruises. She had no strength in her hand for more than six months and even had difficulty raising it up high enough to comb her hair.

The prisoners in the agricultural team were usually strong because they do daily farm work. Sometimes they were called on to abuse practitioners. Between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, when guards forced practitioners to answer roll call, squat or count off by numbers, the prisoners in the agriculture team were called in and stood along the open field. Then guards started to call out individual names. Those who refused to answer, squat or count off would be immediately dragged out and subjected to brutal beating and kicking by those from the agriculture team. They even used their shoes to slap practitioners' faces.

Hospitals were also used to persecute practitioners, especially at the beginning of 2002. Many practitioners were beaten and then sent to the hospital, where they endured additional beatings. These cases were usually hard to make public. Xishanping Hospital in particular was used in the persecution, but not many such cases were exposed. Numerous practitioners such as Yuan Yugang, Huang Guangming, Zhang Zhengwei, Tang Yi, and Wang Zhengrong were sent there as a result of beatings.

At around 8 o'clock in the evening on October 24, 2001, Wei Xia, Jin Tao, Cheng Jianhua, Liu Youxin and I were practicing the exercises in room #7. Guard Wan Zhaohui grabbed hold of my ears and pulled me out of the room with all his strength. On-duty drug addict Yan Rongzhi helped him drag me. They dragged me to the drill ground. Wang Zhaohui urged Yan Rongzhi to beat me brutally and hit me hard right in the face. After a particularly hard blow, part of my nose was torn open, and part of the cartilage was broken. (Even today I still can feel the distorted nasal cartilage). It was raining at the time. My blood mixed with the rain and dripped rapidly from my broken nose. It went all over the ground.

I continued to practice the "Falun Standing Stance Exercise." Wang Zhaohui then got a baton with spikes on the end, and beat me ruthlessly on my arms, legs and ribs. After 20 or 30 hits to my body, I couldn't remaining standing any longer. He dragged me up and wanted to continue the beating. Wang Zhaohui was drunk and completely out of his mind. The prisoners gave him the nickname "alcoholic killer" when he was in charge of the Strictly Controlled Group because he often beat people when he was drunk.

I saw guards on the other side viciously beating other practitioners. Zhang Zhengwei was practicing the "Holding the Wheel above the Head" position. Gao Ding beat Zhang Zhengwei's ribs, back and arms using the spiked baton and shouted, "Raise your hands higher." Zhang Zhengwei's arms hurt so much that he couldn't hold them up any longer. I shouted d at them, "You are the law enforcers, but you are violating the law. We are just practicing. We are innocent." The guards finally stopped the violence.

They then called on three or four practitioners "to have a talk." The practitioners on the drill ground were still practicing. Although in great pain, I continued to practice "Holding the Wheel above the Head." The guards continued to urge Yan Rongzhi to beat me. He pulled my arms down suddenly and struck my liver area with his knee. Immediately I fell and had a hard time breathing. The guards then finally stopped when they saw the severity of our injuries. Eight practitioners were doing exercises together, including Zhang Zhengwei, Chen Jiawu, Wang Zhengrong, Yang Bin, and others.

The next morning I was coughing hard when I got up and had blood in my mucus for a few days. I wasn't able to stand up straight. The pain lasted for more than a month. We were locked in a cell, and the guards never gave me any treatment.

Since September 18, 2001 we had protested the persecution and refused to comply with their rules. We refused to do things like singing, answering roll call and wearing uniforms. Our protest lasted until December 9. In December, the evil persecution worsened suddenly.

Each morning after we got food, everyone had to gather at the drill ground and line up. Dafa practitioners were shouting out loud "Falun Dafa is good" and practiced the "Holding the Wheel above the Head" exercise. The inmates who watched us would pull our hands down or hit us , but most of the inmates were just going through the motions at that point. Because we kept doing this everyday, the inmates and guards got used to it. Eventually the guards just asked the inmates to force us to run around the drill ground. We refused to wear uniforms and only wore our own clothes. Some practitioners even dumped the uniforms into the garbage can.

On November 23, 2001, the National Justice Department convened a meeting in Hainan Province and got the order to intensify the persecution of Dafa practitioners. The Propaganda Department of the Central CCP Committee sent a representative there to convey this order.

On December 16, they started the new campaign. All of a sudden they increased the number of guards to over 30, most of which came from different teams in the Xishanping Labor Camp. All of these new guards were vicious. The other guards who weren't performing up to the enforcers' expectations were transferred. Around 70 practitioners were there at the time. One guard was generally assigned to supervise three practitioners. The prisoners were also increased from more than 100 to more than 200, most of which were strong men selected from different teams. The evildoers investigated the practitioners' files, including their behavior logs and family and work history. They deployed a detailed plan of intensified persecution. Three to four prisoners were assigned to monitor each practitioner.

A new round of persecution started. All of our personal belongs were collected and displayed on the drill ground. The guards ordered the drug addicts to help them conduct a search. Team leader Liu Hua divided us into four groups. All of the cellmates were regrouped. All of the group leaders in the cells were reassigned. The group leaders they thought weren't up to their expectations had their position revoked. Every group had three or four guards, one of them being the group leader.

The four groups were "Loose Control Group" (guards Sun Ping, Wang Zhaohui, Lu Changzhang, etc.), "General Control Group" (guards Huang Yong, Chen Jianping, Wang Jin and others.), "Strict Control Group" (guards Xiao Xingming, Wang Chen and others) and the "Agricultural Group" (guards Zhou Benzhong).

On December 20, 2001, I was sent to the "Strict Control Group." Meals there consisted of less than 0.1 kg of food, approximately 2 oz. The guards called that "Hunger Therapeutics." They would rather have food left over than give it to us. They punished us by making us stand from 6:00 in the morning to 1:00 at night. Standing this long made our feet and legs swell up. The three or four prisoners watching me forced me to squat in a military posture several times, lasting almost one hour each time. They forced me to put my hands behind my back and alternately stand and squat 300 times. They also forced me to listen to the reading of books that slandered Dafa.

There were several books that slandered Dafa. Some of them were edited and printed in Chongqing City. One of them was not meant for the cell inmates, but for the police. It introduced methods on how to "reform" Dafa practitioners by force and brainwashing. They began with psychology studies, to determine how firmly the practitioners believed in Dafa and how practitioners accepted and understood Dafa. Then they developed strategies to make "breakthroughs." When these evildoing people tried to have conversations with practitioners, they had a hidden agenda and purpose each time.

Right before I was released, I was transferred to the Strict Control Group at Xishanping. Prior to the beginning of 2002, the practitioners whose terms had expired were always first transferred to the Strict Control Group and then the local authorities took them back. My two-year term was up on February 28, 2002. Zeng Zhiping from the Tongnan County and Zitong Township CCP committee Secretary Liu took me back.

After I left that evil place, the persecution there worsened. In the Strict Control Group, they no longer just used standing or squatting as punishment. They often acted in groups and viciously beat and kicked Dafa practitioners. The practitioners who didn't want to give up their belief were often beaten until they passed out.

The two years of savage beatings and other abuses and mental torment at the hands of common prisoners and the guards in Xinshanping gave me a broken nose, broken front teeth and severe injuries to my chest, ribs and internal organs. I was so weak and thin. But even in that condition, after my release from the forced labor camp I was still sent to the Tongnan Detention Center for an indefinite period of incarceration.

To be continued...

Posting date: 9/5/2005
Original article date: 9/4/2005
Category: Eyewitness Accounts
Translated on 8/4/2005
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/7/30/107265.html

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