A Middle-aged Farmer’s Ordeal at a Sichuan Brainwashing Center

Ms. Qing Guangrong (???), a 48-year-old farmer from Masang village in Danjingshan town under the Penzhou city jurisdiction, is one of the practitioners who was detained at a brainwashing center established in Sansheng Temple in Sichuan. While Ms. Qing was tending to her crops on the afternoon of March 29, the wife of the Masang Village Party secretary Mr. Wang Zhixiang came to visit her. Ms. Qing took the opportunity to talk to her about Falun Gong, and urged that she and her husband not participate in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Half an hour later, however, Wang, the village party secretary, arrived at Ms. Qing’s home, accompanied by the mayor of Danjingshan and about twenty other people from the local government and police station, some in uniform and some plainclothed. The group surrounded Ms. Qing’s home and ordered her to open her door. When she refused, they forcibly broke into her home and confiscated Falun Gong-related materials, as well as 5,000 yuan in cash. Ms. Qing was then driven against her will to the brainwashing session at Sansheng temple, where she would be detained for the next four months.

Ms. Qing was confined to a small room, about 18 square meters. When Ms. Qing tried to do the Falun Gong meditation exercise, three agents from the local 610 Office (Zhang Xuemei, Qian Ying, and Guo Xinghui) pulled her legs straight and sat on them.

When Ms. Qing was seen doing the exercises at around 6 p.m. on March 30, the day after she arrived, Mao Shunzhi, a section leader from the 610 Office, slapped her in the face. Ms. Qing told them that they must not hit her because it violated her human rights. Mao replied, “You can go ahead and sue me. Nobody saw anything.” Ms. Qing was also beaten and kicked by other officers.

At around 9 a.m. on April 30, 2011, after Ms. Qing had been held there for a month, the deputy director of the Danjingshan 610 Office, Fan Zejun, and other local CCP officials reportedly visited and ordered brainwashing center staff to turn the volume on the TV in Ms. Qing’s room to the maximum. When Ms. Qing went to turn the volume down because it was deafening, the staff hit her in the head with a shoe several times and then started pinching her face, hands and neck. Members of the visiting delegation then slapped Ms. Qing and rammed her head into the wall. The beatings continued until she lost consciousness.

Ms. Qing then went on hunger strike to protest her illegal detention and torture. On the fourth day of her hunger strike, kitchen staff and 610 Office agents held her down, pried open her mouth, and violently force-fed her, leaving her in pain for over a week.

Ms. Qing was finally allowed to return home on July 23, 2011.