At the northeastern corner of the intersection of Gongyenan Street and Huaxin Street in the Licheng District, Jinan City, Shandong Province, there are a group of white buildings behind a high wall covered with barbed wire on top. Along the wall there are watchtowers, one after another, a short distance apart with fully armed police on patrol. This is the Shandong Province Women's Prison, where nearly 300 Falun Gong practitioners are currently detained.
It is extremely difficult for anyone to find the main gate. You can only see a south facing entrance with a placard saying "Shandong Province Xingye Development Company."
The next door to the north is the Shandong Province Men's Prison without any placard at the entrance.
Many inhuman tragedies are deeply buried here.
When you go through the gate marked "Xingye Development Company" and walk to the north through a red and white arch, you will see the placards "Shandong Province Women's Prison" and "Inspection Room of the Shandong Province Women's Prison" on both sides of the iron gate facing west, located between the prison hospital and the sixth ward.
Inside of the iron gate is a moderate sized courtyard surrounded by several white prison buildings that are also workshops holding more than 2000 people. The prison was originally built to hold 1200 inmates, but now it is severely overcrowded. The prison authorities do not fear this fact being known to the public. Currently the prison is detaining nearly 300 Falun Gong practitioners. The inmates do hard labor without pay, with the authorities reaping the financial benefits.
The Distribution of Different Wards and Buildings Inside of the Prison
Inside the main gate and to its left is the prison hospital building, where there is a lockup chamber in the north wing of the first floor. The prison orientation team is just next to the lockup chamber. All new prisoners must first stay in this orientation team chamber, where they are forced to go through a series of mind distorting "education" or brainwashing sessions. This is where prison guards use all kinds of cruel methods to force practitioners to give up their belief, calling it “transformation.” After undergoing mental torture practitioners are then assigned to other wards to do heavy manual labor. The orientation team is located on the first floor in the west section of the south-facing building. The second, third and seventh wards are on the second floor. The open area in front of the building near the flagpole is often used to hold meetings and to stage performances.
Across from the main gate and to the east of the courtyard is a small building facing west. The first floor has a boiler room and a dining hall and the second floor is the auditorium. The basement used to be the fourth team's workshop. The basement is airtight, without light and is filled with filthy air. The inmates are often forced to do manual labor from early morning until late at night. Sometimes they have to work though the night until dawn. In August of one year, the prison authorities forced the fourth team's inmates to work continuously in the basement for eight days and nights, without being allowed to sleep. When they felt sleepy they could only lie down on the floor with their clothes on for half an hour before getting back to work. Practitioners' prison uniforms were soaked in sweat and became smelly. Many people fainted from the extreme fatigue and heat, but the guards just ignored them. After such torture and ill treatment was relayed to the outside and finally exposed on the Internet, international pressure forced the prison authorities to put up a deceptive appearance. They moved the workshop to the slave labor building by the side of the street.
The building of the sixth and eighth wards, the division of education, the juvenile section, and the fifth ward's prison cells and workshop are in the building to the south of the courtyard. The west half of the building is the sixth ward, where production areas are on the first and second floors. The third and fourth floors are prison cells. The sixth ward houses all kinds of inmates from other wards who are old, weak, disabled or mentally ill. Healthy people became mentally ill in the prison, where they face endless prison terms, are forced to do heavy manual labor, day in and day out, and suffer from loneliness. Even worse, Falun Gong practitioners are forced to go through brainwashing sessions and are injected with a poisonous drug that harms the central nervous system. The ward authorities inhumanly exploit the practitioners to the worst extent. No matter how much they suffer, however, the ward authorities will not release them. The workshop hours are usually over ten hours a day. After the regular hours, inmates have to routinely take work back to their cells and continue working.
To the north of the main gate are two newer buildings holding slave labor workshops. One of the two buildings is right by the street, across of which is a newly developed modern residential area. As there are always lights on at night in the workshop, the people living nearby, including business owners and passers-by, can get a direct impression of the inhumane slave labor going on there. Under pressure from the media, the prison once again deceived the public and forced the inmates to take their work back to their prison cells where they had to continue after a long day of labor (usually over 10 hours). Sometimes, in order to trick the inspectors, prison authorities order the inmates to suddenly stop working and evacuate the workshop in the dark. It has happened so often that a water heater broke and people were burned by the boiling water splashing out.
This is the exterior of the "Ministry Level Modern and Civilized Prison."
Since 2000, the warden Yin Guangxia, deputy warden Li Shuying, and political instructor Wei Jianhua have made an effort to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. They repeatedly lock up in solitary cells, all those practitioners who they will not "transform" and those who, after being “transformed,” regained their belief in Falun Gong.
In the solitary cell, which is two meters wide and four meters long, there is a bed 40 centimeters high made of cement. There is also a water tap and basin and the walls are covered in quakeproof blankets. It is very cold in the winter. It is even more uncomfortable in the summer, because the summers in Jinan City are very hot. Anyone in this place will feel that it is hard to breathe and will sweat all over. Furthermore, there are a lot of mosquitoes in the summer. When Falun Gong practitioners are locked in this solitary cell, they are given salty vegetable pieces for all three meals each day. For each week, three and half days are for regular buns (125 grams each and one per meal) and three and half days for small buns (as small as the eyeball of a bull and only one per meal). The inmates often follow the guards' orders to beat steadfast practitioners so as to get their prison terms reduced.
