The First Women’s Forced Labor Camp of Shandong Province is located in Lixia District, Weifang City, Shandong Province. Female Falun Gong practitioners have been detained there since July 20, 1999. At one time, there were over 800 female Falun Gong practitioners incarcerated in the camp. Five platoons have been set up especially to force Falun Gong practitioners to denounce their belief through torture. The tremendous pressure, brutal physical torture, and intensive forced labor have driven at least three practitioners to severe mental collapse.

Below is a list of torture methods that the labor camp uses:

·  Sitting on Stools

Since October 2000, practitioners have been forced to wake up at 5:00 a.m. and are not allowed to go to sleep until after midnight. They are made to sit still on stools all day, without any break, in a position with their hands placed flat on their knees and their backs perpendicular to the floor. Other inmates are forced to savagely beat and kick anyone who dozes off or speaks.

·  Forced to March, Stand, or Squat
Practitioners are forced to march non-stop for over ten hours a day. Anyone who refuses to march is beaten harshly, placed in a solitary confinement cell, and secretly and intensively tortured. Practitioners are also forced to stand facing a wall all day long, with their noses pressed against the wall at all times. Often, the elderly female practitioners collapse from having to hold this position. Then they are cursed and beaten. They are also frequently forced to squat for extended periods.

·  Burned with Mosquito Coils

The camp guards often burn practitioners on their backs with lit mosquito coils,[1] leaving their backs covered with ulcerations from severe burns.

·  Hung Upside Down

When practitioners have gotten up at 4:00 a.m. to practice the Falun Gong exercises, the camp guards have punished them by hanging them upside down. They tied their legs together, bound their hands behind their backs, and hung them upside down from 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. This abuse is often repeated for many days. Some practitioners have been hung upside down intermittently for as long as six months.

·  Exposed to Freezing Temperatures

In winter, some practitioners are stripped of their clothing and tied to beds, with their heads hanging off the ends of the beds. Then the guards open all the windows in the room and leave the practitioners in the freezing cold winter air.

·  The Four Limbs Pulled in Four Directions

A practitioner’s arms are tied to the bedposts and her legs are spread out and tied to the footboard of the bed. Her ankles are then hung over the footboard so that her legs are not able to touch the bed. Next they tie one end of a bed sheet to her waist and tie the other end to another bed across from this one, raising the practitioner’s waist in the air. Thus the victim’s body is pulled tightly in four different directions. This is an extremely cruel torture that often results in dislocated joints.

·  Wrists Slit

The camp guards and inmates slit practitioners’ wrists and then force them to wash the wounds, causing the wounds to fester and swell. Many practitioners are left with rings of visible scars on their wrists.

·  Savage Beatings

The camp guards use the incentive of reduced prison terms to instigate inmates to watch and torture Falun Gong practitioners. They constantly slap practitioners on the face, kick them in the lower abdomen, punch them on their breasts, hit their heads with their elbows, and use their leather shoes to crush and grind their bare feet. Sometimes eight to nine inmates take turns savagely beating one practitioner all night long. Some use bamboo sticks to flog them; some use their shoe soles to slap them; and some use their fingernails to pinch them. Several times, when the inmates have increased their brutality, the police have reduced their prison terms.

The camp guards themselves also beat practitioners. In October of 2000, all of the practitioners in the 5^th Platoon demanded their release. At dawn on October 27, 2000, the captain of the 5th Platoon, Niu Xuelian, ordered the disciplinary guards to keep pouring water into their cells until they had flooded every cell on the entire floor. She also ordered a large number of guards to beat the practitioners. At around 7:00 p.m., a S.W.A.T. team arrived at the forced labor camp. Under the lead of Captain Niu Xuelian, they entered the corridor and shocked the practitioners with electric batons, then dragged them around on the floor by their hair. Some police officers threw practitioners on the floor and choked them until they lost consciousness.

·  Shocked with Electric Batons

The camp guards often shock practitioners with multiple electric batons for many hours. Many practitioners’ forearms end up covered with large blisters because of the electric shocks, causing excruciating pain. The camp guards make a special point of shocking practitioners’ sensitive body parts, such as their palms, the soles of their feet, and the tops of their heads.

·  Locked Up in a Small Cell

The camp guards lock practitioners who refuse to renounce Falun Gong in solitary confinement cells for long periods of time, sometimes even for months on end. On July 27, 2000, more than 40 female practitioners were thrown into solitary confinement cells.

·  Punitive Force-Feeding

When practitioners go on hunger strikes to protest the inhumane treatment, the camp guards torture them with punitive force-feedings. Usually two guards drag a practitioner out of her cell to the end of corridor. Then they kick her to the ground. One guard presses a foot against her rib cage while the other guards pry open her mouth. Sometimes they insert a hard, foul-smelling, and unsanitary rubber tube into her nose. Blood gushes out the nose and throat of almost every victim, causing them to cry out in agony. The appalling wails of agony and the noises of the electric batons haunt the corridor all day long. Some practitioners are tortured with punitive force-feeding over a period of as long as six months at a time.

·  Forced Injections of Neurotoxic Drugs

Some practitioners are administered forced injections of drugs that damage their central nervous systems. Afterwards, they drool uncontrollably and their faces become distorted. Some practitioners have died after forced injections of these drugs.

·  Sleep Deprivation

When trying to force the practitioners to renounce Falun Gong, the camp guards sometimes allow them only three to four hours of sleep every night or prevent them from sleeping at all. Ms. Sun Mingxiang was once denied sleep for three consecutive days.

·  Intensive Work Overload

Practitioners are forced to work daily for extended hours to make products for export. They are forced to get up at 5:30 a.m. every day and work nonstop until 10:30 p.m., 11:00 p.m., or even after midnight. Some practitioners are forced to paint on glass bottles using ink that contains benzene,[2] even though the storage room has no ventilation. The exposure to benzene has caused practitioners to feel nauseated, vomit, lose their appetites, and suffer from fatigue. However, the camp guards persistently force practitioners to work extended hours of hard labor, including even those who are on hunger strikes. Slowing down the pace of work results in immediate insults, sneering, and brutality from the police. Some practitioners frequently collapse due to extreme exhaustion.