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Poisonous Drugs - A Method of Torture Used on Falun Gong Practitioners

 

1. Qinghai Province

2. Wuhan City, Hubei Province

3. Shandong Province

 

Many Falun Gong practitioners held in detention centers, labor camps and prisons are exposed to all sorts of horrific torture in order to "transform"  them. The perpetrators sometimes inject the practitioners with unknown substances or mix different toxins with their food. The practitioners then display different levels of drowsiness, fatigue, difficulty walking, loss of motor functions, loss of memory and delayed reactions. Some have fallen into a deep sleep or delirium, as their minds and bodies were devastated. Some Falun Gong practitioners who were held even for a short period of time developed severe pulmonary tuberculosis, thoracic fluid accumulation, hepatitis and other infectious diseases, making them extremely weak. Their healthy bodies were ruined.

 

Consulted medical professionals have explained that, judging from the symptoms, it is obvious that practitioners were injected with or ingested toxins that targeted the central nervous system. If exposed to these toxins for a prolonged period, the result was organ damage and eventually organ failure. The after-effects differ based on the dosage and the length of exposure.

Qinghai Province

 

The incidents below expose a sinister persecution pattern: First, beating determined Falun Gong practitioners, then locking them in solitary confinement without a bed, a cover or a bed sheet, compelling them to sleep on the concrete floor. The guards take injured practitioners to mental hospitals or the labor camp clinic to inject them with unknown drugs; sometimes they mix the unknown drugs with other specific drugs. They order drug addicts, who are assigned to monitor Falun Gong practitioners, to force the practitioners to ingest pills several times a day. When the practitioners develop symptoms of being absentminded or suffer a nervous breakdown from the drugs, they "reform" the practitioners through brutal means. They may also say that the practitioner developed these problems from practicing Falun Gong. They separate determined practitioners from other practitioners to weaken their willpower.

 

In order to quickly "reform" the practitioners, destroy the practitioners' willpower and justify the persecution, the officials at detention centers, labor camps and prisons where practitioners are held against the law often resort to some shocking tactics. They secretly inject sleeping practitioners with unknown drugs or put poisonous drugs in their food, which results in general malaise, difficulty walking, stunted speech, a rapid decline of reaction and memory, and organ damage. Some practitioners suffer from a complete mental breakdown or cannot wake up from comatose sleep.

 

 

Qinghai Province Women's Forced Labor Camp

 

The guards at the Qinghai Province Women's Forced Labor Camp tortured determined Falun Gong practitioners. Those practitioners who refused to give up practicing Falun Gong were locked in solitary confinement cells, shocked with electric batons, and had to endure savage beatings at the hands of inmate drug addicts whom the officials incited.

 

 

1.      Ms. Fan Lihong died as a Result of Torture at the Qinghai Women's Forced Labor Camp and Mental Hospital.

 

Practitioner Ms. Fan Lihong was a 29-year-old single woman. Sometime between May 5 and 6, 2001, Qinghai Province Women's Labor Camp officials transported her to a mental hospital against her will. The policemen, doctors and other officials force-fed her drugs at that facility. She was taken to a mental hospital on several occasions and was physically and mentally abused. After Ms. Fan left the mental hospital, she suffered from loss of appetite and was often disoriented. Her body was discovered in Qinghai People's Park in January 2002.

 

2.      Several Practitioners Endured Torture in Solitary Confinement Cells inside Qinghai Province Women's Labor Camp

 

During the 2002 Chinese New Year, a practitioner was deceived into going to the police station, where she was arrested and then taken to a solitary confinement cell at Qinghai Province Women's Forced Labor Camp. Following is what she witnessed. The person incarcerated in the adjoining cell, No. 2, was practitioner Ms. Li Guixiang. Her body was covered in bruises and wounds after the guards beat her, and she could barely walk. She had to lean against a wall and inch her way to the restroom because of the pain from the beating. Practitioner Ms. Li Jing, in her 60s and on a protest hunger strike, was held in cell No. 3. Ms. Li's hunger strike lasted for many days. The guards administered previously unknown drugs and other despicable means to torture some practitioners, to the point that the practitioners suffered mental breakdowns. They became anxious and delirious, and clawed the wall with their fingers and gnawed at the table.

 

3.      A Public Announcement from the Qinghai Province Evidence Collection Group to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong

 

Practitioner Ms. Wang Shujuan refused to wear a prisoner's ID tag. The guards shocked her sensitive body areas, including her head, face, palm and the soles of her feet, with four electric batons for a long time. When the batteries died, they recharged them and resumed electro-shocking her. They put unknown drugs into her soup and brought it to her. She took a sip and felt it tasted strange. Thinking it might be poisoned or contain drugs especially made to brutalize practitioners, she didn't drink any more. Still, the little bit of soup she consumed made her tongue numb and her mouth foam. Her hands and feet were cold and numb, and her legs were sometimes numb and painful. She then held a nine-day hunger strike in the solitary confinement cell. In order to force her to give up Falun Gong, the guards made her run for hours every day, even though she was extremely weak from the hunger strike. They tried to destroy her willpower and exhaust her through continuous beatings as punishment. The cruel torture caused permanent physical damage. She still suffers from numbness and pain in her legs.

 

Practitioner Ms. Zhang Xuefeng refused to give up her belief while being held at the labor camp. That is why the camp officials injected her with nerve-damaging drugs that caused her to lose her mind.

 

Practitioner Ms. Tan Yingchun was tortured to death at the same labor camp.

 

 

Qinghai Province Men's Forced Labor Camps

 

 

Practitioner Mr. He Wanzhu, held at Qinghai Province Men's Forced Labor Camp in Baduo Town, Qinghai Province, smelled something strange in the soup one day. He took a small sip and immediately realized something was wrong - the food had been laced with poison. He dumped the soup but felt a tightness in his chest and numbness in his mouth.

 

 

Qinghai Province Women's Drug Rehabilitation Forced Labor Camp

 

 

Guard Zhang Wenjing often tried to "reform" a young Falun Gong practitioner, a girl named Luo Fang from Gansu Province. When Ms. Luo firmly refused to give up her belief, Zhang Wenjing shocked her with electric batons and beat and kicked her. Ms. Luo was traumatized from the torture, yet the guards stated Ms. Luo had gone crazy from practicing Falun Gong. She was starved and forced to stand for several days. Later she was savagely beaten. Guards shocked her with electric batons. People heard the sizzling sound of electric batons and the frying of human flesh throughout the entire building. The guards beat Ms. Luo until fluid dripped from her ears. Then they locked her in a solitary confinement cell. The guards ordered five inmates to carry her into the labor camp clinic, where they injected her with what they claimed were high-quality drugs. Many practitioners saw her gnaw at tables and crawl under the bed and table after she was injected with the drugs.

 

Practitioners Fan Lihong and Zhang Xuefeng suffered nervous breakdowns and died after they were injected with similar drugs. Fan and Zhang confirmed to other practitioners before their deaths that they had been injected with nerve-damaging drugs.

 

Practitioner Ms. Li Yuanping is a healthcare professional. During her detention at Qinghai Province Women's Drug Rehabilitation Forced Labor Camp she discovered the labor camp is in fact a torture chamber used solely to detain and persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Ms. Li Yuanping was shocked with electric batons at the hands of several guards and was severely injured. The guards forced her to undergo "medical treatment." Doctor Chen Qinghua prescribed some drugs. Ms. Li gave the drugs to the addicts assigned to monitor her, but Chen repeatedly told them to force her to take the drugs "on time." Ms. Li saw that these round pills had no marking on them like other pills. She became nauseous and numb after ingesting them. She was tired, she could barely walk, her speech and movement were stunted, and her reaction time and memory declined.

 

Other Forced Labor Camps in Qinghai Province

 

Practitioner Mr. Ping Chunfeng, a staff member at Qinghai Normal University who later became a section head at the Logistics Department, reported that on two separate occasions in 2002 (when he was detained at Duoba Town's Forced Labor Camp) and 2003, he was injected with poisonous drugs and his food was laced with poison. When he was released, he became delirious and could not fully describe the situation while he had been detained at the forced labor camp. Soon he was detained for the second time and the officials put him under strict surveillance. He passed away in 2005.

 

 

Wuhan City, Hubei Province

 

Use of Drugs on Practitioners in Brainwashing Centers in Wuhan City, Hubei Province

According to concerned sources, Wuhan City Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested and sent to brainwashing centers. They have been tortured with the use of drugs. Those responsible also poisoned the food and water the practitioners ate and drank. The drugs they secretly put in the food are actually poisons that affect the nervous system.

 

Practitioners who were perfectly healthy before their arrest developed many symptoms as a result of this form of torture. Their symptoms ranges from dizziness, irregular heartbeat, unusually fast heart rate (resting heart rate of more than 100/minute), unusual physical responses, and irregular mind/body coordination (for example, being mentally alert without restlessness, but yet with a heartbeat far above normal). After the drugging, practitioners' faces became swollen and covered with a red pox. Since March of 2006, the majority of practitioners released from Hubei Province Jail were taken to the Jianghan District Brainwashing Center. At least ten to twenty of them had similar experiences there and exhibited similar symptoms.

 

The food provided at the brainwashing center was somewhat better than the food in jail, because within the jail, the police had, for the most part, confiscated funds for the prisoners' living expenses. Even in the terrible prison conditions, such symptoms never arose, yet they appeared when the detained practitioners were taken to the brainwashing center. The practitioners asked why, when they were sitting still and feeling mentally stable, their heart rates were still far above normal. The guards and the doctors replied that if the heart rate was 60-120 per minute then it was normal. The poisoned food had no abnormal taste or color, and there were no intense reactions after eating it. Although it caused them to feel sick, they could still talk, wash, and perform other normal activities. Some people lost all awareness or became dazed right at the time of eating, and only afterwards could they recollect what happened. Some practitioners realized what was happening and subsequently refused to eat or drink, and as a result were taken from the center and imprisoned elsewhere.

 

At the brainwashing center, practitioners were detained separately in closed rooms and were not allowed to come and go. Food and water were delivered individually, making it easy to drug the food in transit. At the Qiaokou District Brainwashing Center, when imprisoned practitioners asked why the food they were given had a strange chemical taste, the guards similarly avoided the questions.

 

 

Shandong Province

 

 

Ms. Meng Lijun Lost Her Memory Due to a Poisonous Injection

 

Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Meng Lijun is from Guanzhuang Township, Zhangqiu City, Shandong Province.

 

In September 2005, the persecutors arrested her in Jinan City and injected her with nerve damaging drugs, resulting in her memory loss. In this condition, she was made to show up at a trial.

 

The prison authorities did not notify Ms. Meng's family before her scheduled trial, but brought her husband, who they had threatened, to the Court on that day. Ms. Meng, incapacitated by the drugs, was sentenced to 10 years in Shandong Provincial Women's Prison. The Administration of the Prison refused family visitations until April 2006. When Ms. Meng's 80-year-old mother and her niece came to visit, it was as if they were seeing a different person. Ms. Meng could not remember anything about her past and she just cried, "I want to go home! I want to go home!"

 

Weifang City Forced Labor Camp Uses Drugs to Torture Practitioner Mr. Jiang Guobo

 

Wang Xiaofeng and a few other secret agents from the Weifang City National Security Bureau arrested Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Jiang Guobo. They detained Mr. Jiangat the Hanting Detention Center where he was tortured, causing him to lose consciousness many times. His weight plummeted to about 35 kilograms. By November 2005, his life was in great danger, but rather than release him, they sentenced him to three years of forced labor again. He was sent to the Weifang City Forced Labor Camp.

 

Xu Lihua, the manager of the forced labor camp, Zhu Anle, the chief of the administration section, and other officials incited prison doctor Zhang to force-feed Mr. Jiang. They used a large size nose tube (as wide as a little finger) to feed him, which caused him to bleed every time. Moreover, they added drugs to the food to further torture Mr. Jiang. They started to add unknown drugs to the food after he had been in the forced labor camp for a month. The drugs damaged his nervous system and organs, and paralyzed his excretory system.

 

After a few months of brutal feeding and being force-fed drugs, Mr. Jiang's body and mind were seriously injured. He experienced severe dizziness that lasted for long periods of time, causing him to faint. His resting heartbeat reached 110 to 120 beats per minute, and he usually woke up in the night because of urine retention. On April 14, 2006, Mr. Jiang experienced symptoms of a very severe heart disease; his life was in great danger. The authorities were afraid to take responsibility, so they sent him to the emergency room of the Weifang City People's Hospital. That same day, they released him on bail for medical treatment.

 

After Mr. Jiang went home, however, the persecution continued. The Weifang City 610 Office requested that the Weifang City Judicature Bureau and the Weifang City Notary Public Office (Mr. Jiang's employer) send personnel to be on duty in Mr. Jiang's dormitory reception room in shifts to keep him under surveillance and restrict his personal freedom.

 

Police Inject Ms. Lu Xia with Nerve Damaging Drugs before Her Court Appearance

 

Ms. Lu Xia was a staff member at the Yarn Factory of Mengyin County, Shandong Province. She was sentenced to eight years in prison and is still in Jinan Women's Prison.

 

In June 2004, about 20 police officers from Taian arrested Ms. Lu and other practitioners. They were later interrogated, brutally tortured, and injected with nerve damaging drugs. Their bodies and minds were devastated.

 

On September 15, 2004, practitioners Ms. Lu, Mr. Zhao Weidong (from Taian), Ms. Song Furong, Ms. Qu Beibei, Ms. Qu Xiaotong (from Lu Nan), Ms. Song Qiai, and Ms. Hou Qingyuan were secretly sentenced at the Taishan District Court in Taian City. Before the Taishan District Court's pre-trial hearing (the so-called opening investigation), all seven practitioners were injected with unknown drugs. As a result none of them were able to speak during the court session.

 

The seven practitioners were severely tortured. As a result, their bodies were extremely weak. Mr. Zhao Weidong and Ms. Hou Qingyuan could still walk independently, but three others needed help to walk. The remaining two had become very skinny; they looked as if they were on the verge of death. People passing by the outer yard who saw them were all shocked and touched, some visibly showed sympathy.

 

On September 24, the Taishan District Court sentenced the seven practitioners to from eight to 12 years in prison. Ms. Lu was sentenced to eight years. Before sending six female practitioners to Jinan Women's Prison, the police again injected them with drugs that damage the nervous system. The practitioners' tongues were stiff. They drooled and could not speak.

 

Ms. Lu Xia is still imprisoned at Jinan Women's Prison.