False Fronts Built on Forced Labour Camps to Conceal the Persecution of Falun Gong from Media and Foreign Investors

Since Jiang Zemin started to lock up Falun Gong practitioners in forced labour camps, practitioners have been exposing the persecution to the world. When international human rights organisations and foreign media demanded to investigate the alleged persecution against Falun Gong practitioners in China, Jiang Zemin's group started to spend a huge amount of taxpayers' money to put false fronts on its forced labour camps, and then invited foreign media to staged tours of carefully selected and prepared labour camps, hoping to conceal the persecution from the international community.

A reporter named Zhao Yali has interviewed three Falun Gong practitioners lucky enough to survive more than 1 and 1/2 years of illegal imprisonment in a forced labour camp. The followings are their testimonies against the false fronts built to conceal the persecution.

Mr. Zhao Ming in Ireland

Jiang Zemin's regime spared no expense in putting false faces on forced labour camps to deceive the whole world. Just in the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Beijing where I was illegally detained, they spent a huge amount of money put up a false front to conceal the persecution. They started to renovate the Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp for the "show tours," that included but were not limited to the following:

1. Replacing the electrical wires on the tall wall with infrared detectors and video cameras.
2. Painting sports and athletic images on the tall walls to create a false impression.
3. Replacing the iron bars outside the cells with the whitewashed ones with a peacock design.
4. Installing a fish bowl, houseplants and a television set in each "show cell." (Not every cell would be shown in the staged tours.)
5. Replacing rusty old kitchen cookware with new stainless steel and all coal stoves in the kitchen with gas ones. (The actual diet did not improve.)
6. Planting trees and grass in the courtyard, and raising deer, rabbits and chickens.

These false fronts can easily deceive the foreign media and investors and lead them to believe that the forced labour camp is a comfortable resort - with deer even! Behind these expensive false fronts, many Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured and murdered in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp. Imagine that Jiang Zemin's regime would spend a lavish amount of taxpayers' money to create a false impression that China's human rights have been improved so that it can lure foreign investors to the Chinese market, to evade worldwide condemnation and pressure to end the persecution, and to win the chance to host the Olympic Games, and, most importantly, to continue the persecution of Falun Gong.

I remember that, one day in 2001, a group of determined Falun Gong practitioners, including myself, were removed from our cells to a room, where we were forced to watch old black and white movies for the entire morning. It was not until we were sent back to our cells in the afternoon that we learned they brought a group of foreign reporters to the forced labour camp for a show tour, so they hid us in an isolated room away from the foreign reporters.

We also learned later that the labour camp staff deliberately and carefully arranged two Falun Gong practitioners that had just arrived to meet the foreign reporters on the show tour Since these two Falun Gong practitioners had not yet experienced the tortures in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, they were unable to reveal the atrocities to the foreign reporters.

While illegally detained in the camp, I witnessed the making of fabricated news, which was one of the most effective tools to create and sustain the persecution against Falun Gong. In the latter half of 2001, reporters from China Central TV (CCTV) came to Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp and interviewed me for an entire afternoon. First a reporter claiming to be the host of an English TV programme on CCTV conducted an interview in English. Next a reporter from CCTV's programme, Focus Interview, Ms. Li Yuqiang, who interviewed a girl completely covered with bandages that they had claimed to be Ms. Liu Siying in the self-immolation act, conducted another interview in Chinese. (World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong has started to investigate Ms. Li Yuqiang's involvement in the fabrication of news pertaining to the self-immolation act in the Tiananmen Square.) These reporters acted like they supported Falun Gong, and asked me many positive questions such as, "How did you start the practise of Falun Gong?", "Please share with us your personal experiences in cultivating in Falun Gong", or "What are the benefits you have obtained from cultivating in Falun Gong?", etc. In response to these very positive questions, I answered them wholeheartedly and also added my understanding of Falun Dafa from the scientific perspective. I was very pleased with the interview, but it did not occur to me at the time that such a positive interview about Falun Gong from CCTV could not have been broadcast after the persecution began.

Naturally, none of my original words were shown in CCTV's Focus Interview. It was not until September 2002 that it became clear how the footage was used. A fellow practitioner in Brussels received a VCD from a Chinese official when she practised Falun Gong exercises in front the Chinese Embassy. After she played the VCD, she realised that it contained TV programmes slandering Falun Dafa. Because she saw me in these TV programmes, she mailed the VCD to me. It wasn't until I played the VCD that I realised how CCTV presented the interview on its TV programmes. They edited out words from my sentences and replaced them with words with opposite meaning so that the end product looked as if I had made testimonies against Falun Gong. They actually used only a few sentences from the many hours of interviews that afternoon that they could manage to alter the meaning of by a heavy amount of editing work. It became clear to me that they had spent the entire afternoon interviewing me, only to lure me to say a few words that they could edit to be used to conceal the tortures in the forced labour camp.

Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp looks like a comfortable resort, but the tortures are by no means any less severe than those in other labour camps in China. Inside Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp, right and wrong are completely reversed. The prison guards forced Falun Gong practitioners to stand or sit for an extended amount of time, making us lie still on the bed using handcuffs and foot shackles for an extended period of time, forcing us to squat in the military style for a long time, forcing us to run, locking us up in the boiler room in the middle of summer, etc. The prison guards designed all kind of punitive measures to push us to the limit and to crush our will. They would stop at nothing to attain these goals. Due to these punitive measures, deprivation of sleep, constant cursing and intimation, Falun Gong practitioners quickly developed grey hair, lost substantial weight, suffered from swelling and aching limbs, external and internal injuries, depression, temporary loss of memory, etc. Some practitioners were even driven to mental collapse, or tortured to death.

I sincerely hope that international human rights organizations and the international media will be able to see through the carefully designed false fronts of the forced labour camps and discover the truth that Jiang Zemin's regime has been systematically persecuting Falun Gong practitioners' human rights. I also hope they will help to end the persecution by broadcasting the truth.

Mr. Chen Gang in the United States

I was also illegally detained in Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp in Beijing. They brought a group of reporters from Hong Kong, Macao, and Europe in June 2001 to the Camp for a show tour. Before their arrival, the disciplinary staff prepared a list of questions and answers and forced everyone to memorise them. They also broadcast the same list of questions and answers on closed circuit TV repeatedly to make everyone memorize them. Some of the questions and answers I remember are:

Question: Have the staff in the forced labour camp ever beat you? Answer: No.

Question: How would you describe the diet in the forced labour camp? Answer: It's good. The meals contain fish and meat.

Question: Is there anyone in the forced labour camp detained for practising Falun Gong? Answer: No. They are arrested because they disrupt public order.

I remember that Mr. Ni Zhengxiong, a prison guard in the 2nd platoon, gathered everyone in a special meeting before the show tour. He specifically warned everyone not to reveal the fact that anyone was beaten here and especially not to reveal the existence of the "Forced Labour Dispatch Centre." The "Forced Labour Dispatch Centre" is a place where they subject you to a lot of torture before they dispatch you to the assigned forced labour camps.

Despite the warnings and "training", Tuanhe Forced Labour Camp hid all the determined Falun Gong practitioners in the secret factory room in the most obscure corner of the labour camp [that was not part of the show tour.] One thing I would also like to mention was the type of product Falun Gong practitioners were forced to produce under enslavement. The forced labour factory room I was put in specialized in wrapping disposable wooden chopsticks with the word "disinfected" printed on the paper wrappers. Contrary to the message on the wrappers, none of the chopsticks were disinfected. In fact, the factory room was extremely filthy.

Falun Gong practitioners are subject to physical tortures everyday, but on the day of the show tour everyone, except those of us who were hidden in the forced labour factory room, was made to pretend playing basketball. The also improved the meal for the day to impress the visitors. As soon as the reporters left the camp, everything went back to normal.

To prepare for this show tour scheduled for June 2001, they also established a special "show platoon" in advance. The "show platoon" consisted of Falun Gong practitioners that had completely renounced Falun Gong. [That means they had not only renounced Falun Gong in writing, but also abandoned the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance in their words and actions. They would curse and beat others in exchange for reduction of prison terms, and had even started to help torture determined Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong's teaching strictly forbids practitioners from cursing or beating others.] They temporarily stopped beating these "reformed" practitioners on the "show platoon" prior to the show tour to hide the facts of torture from the reporters. Those of us who persevered in believing in Falun Gong were hidden from the foreign reporters, to prevent us from mentioning or revealing the persecution or the truth behind the show tour or "show platoon" to them.

Yoko Kaneko in Japan

I have just been released from the Beijing City Female Forced Labour Camp, which was built in March 2002. We were moved from Xin'an Forced Labour Camp. I heard that they spent an enormous sum of taxpayers' money to build Beijing City Female Forced Labour Camp for a special reason, and the reason behind the lavish spending soon became clear to me. This forced labour camp can be easily mistaken as a vacation resort if judged by its exterior. They made a special effort to build a computer lab, a library, and even a fitness room. Each cell accommodated twelve inmates. We were even forced to decorate the space between the pillow and the wall with small handcrafts, framed photos, or synthetic flowers for the show tours. It was nothing but a deliberate plan to deceive the foreign reporters on the show tours and to use these deceived reporters to spread their impressions of the camp's false fronts.

There were many show tours of the Beijing City Female Forced Labour Camp. The 3rd platoon was known as the "show platoon." Every inmate on the 3rd platoon was carefully selected to meet the foreign reporters. Besides the show tours, the disciplinary staff would also make us act like we were living well in front of the camcorder and then broadcast the staged footage to the outside world.

Normally we were not even allowed to walk in the courtyard, but on a day in March of 2003, they forced everyone to take leisurely walks in the courtyard. Back then I had just returned from the hospital because my blood pressure had surged alarmingly high due to the torture. Despite my frail health, they ordered inmates to carry me by the arms and drag me to the courtyard. Once I made it to the courtyard, I discovered that a staff member was holding a camcorder in the distance, videotaping the "leisurely walk."

There was a room in Beijing City Female Forced Labour Camp called the "mini-mart," which carried a small selection of daily necessities and food. When some prison inmates purchased some items in the mini-mart, the staff would videotape the purchasing process to showcase the "improved" condition of the labour camp.

I can testify anytime that I was never allowed to use any computer in the computer lab. As for the library, I was only allowed to enter it for cleaning. One day, they wanted to make a TV programme that featured Ms. Li Jirong, a disciplinary staff member who had recently been promoted for persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. They herded us into the library, gave each of us a book as a prop, and made Ms. Li Jirong pretend she was chatting with Falun Gong practitioners, and she was "caring" and "guiding" them along the right path.

After I returned to Japan, I was astonished to hear a friend tell me that she was impressed with the beautiful exterior and interior design of Chinese forced labour camps. Little did she know that these lavish appearances were purposely designed to conceal the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Those who saw footage of the forced labour camp cannot begin to imagine the level of atrocities beneath the surface. The truth is that Falun Gong practitioners are subject to both cruel torture and slavery. The staff in the camp would isolate a Falun Gong practitioner in a room during the forced brainwashing session in order to conceal their tortures. It was in the beautifully decorated cells that drug addicts took turns monitoring Falun Gong practitioners, denying us sleep, and torturing us at will under the prison police's orders. It was in the beautifully designed labour camp that Falun Gong practitioners were forced to wake up at 3:00 AM each day to knit sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves and other export products.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/1/2/63837.html