Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp

Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp (now renamed No. 2 Tuanhe Section of Beijing City Prison) was one of first locations where Falun Gong practitioners were persecuted. From the beginning of the persecution in July 1999 to the end of 2003, more than a thousand of Falun Gong practitioners were illegally detained there.

A guard here admitted to putting drugs into Falun Gong practitioners’ meals, antihypertensive ones that “destroy the central nervous system”. Practitioners were monitored by assigned inmates, tortured via the “death bed” or “tiger bench”, shocked by electric batons, beaten by guards, force-fed and drenched in cold water, left in the snow to freeze, contorted under a low bed, hung up by handcuffs, forced to endure squat torture, and more. Many practitioners were tortured until they fell unconscious, broke their bones or spines, became paralyzed, or passed away.

Featured Prisoners of Conscience

Mr. Bu Dongwei was arrested in 2006. His case caught the attention of the New York Times and Amnesty International, who highlighted him a prisoner of conscience at serious risk of torture or ill-treatment.

“Bu Dongwei had previously served a term of ten months’ RTL from August 2000 to May 2001 in Tuanhe RTL facility for ‘using a heretical organization to disrupt the implementation of the law’ after he petitioned the authorities asking them to review their ban on Falun Gong. During this period, he was reportedly subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including being made to sit all day in a small chair as well as beatings and sleep deprivation aimed at forcing him to renounce his belief in Falun Gong.” said Amnesty International.

Mr. Li Lanqiang, a former math teacher, served approximately four years in Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. The first was in 2002, when police saw he still refused to renounce Falun Gong despite the mandatory brainwashing sessions, they ransacked his home and gave him a 1.5-year labor camp term.

Mr. Li was beaten by the guards at the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp on December 5, 2002, when he refused to comply with the body search.

Mr. Li was arrested again in November 2004 and given another 2.5 years in the same Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp. The guards ordered the inmates to monitor him, starve him, and restrict his restroom use. When he refused to renounce Falun Gong, they forced him to sit on a small stool for more than ten hours each day without moving. His buttocks festered as a result.

Sometimes three other inmates sat close to him, rendering him unable to move. In the hot summer, the guards closed the window of the 90 square-foot room that Mr. Li and three inmates were held in, and refused to provide water to him.

Mr. Wang Chongjun, of Chaoyang District, Beijing, was arrested on April 14, 2008. After a month of silence, Mr. Wang’s family received notices sent by Beijing Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp, notifying them that Wang had been sentenced to two years of forced labor on May 22, 2008.

While he was detained, guards in the camp injected Mr. Wang with an unknown drug that caused him to become emaciated. The camp authorities saw that he was dying and quickly released him. He skin had turned yellow from the drug.

His family picked him up and took him to the hospital for an emergency operation. Mr. Wang died on the afternoon of August 23, 2008, the day before the Beijing Olympics’ closing ceremony. His wife was detained in Shanxi Province Forced Labor Camp, so she did not know about her husband’s death until much later. Wang was 65 years old.

Mr. Peng Guangjun of Huairou District, Beijing, died in January of 2004, from the mistreatment he suffered in Tuanhe Labor Camp. On the flag raising ceremony of the prison on the Chinese New Year day, Mr. Peng shouted “Falun Dafa is Good!” Because of this, he was taken to the intensively managed ward, where Mr. Peng was beaten, electric shocked, force fed with hot pepper water. Guard poured water inside of his cloth in freezing days. Within 4 days, Mr. Peng died as a result of torture.