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Force-feeding is a torture method that labour camp staff often use on Falun Gong practitioners, particularly on those who have staged hunger strikes to protest their unlawful detention. However, it is certainly not an attempt to nourish or feed; rather, it is a brutal procedure that has resulted in at least 100 deaths. The force-feeding is most often carried out by labour camp staff with no medical training, or by criminal inmates who are coerced to assist. Firm, unsanitized tubes are forced into a practitioner’s nose and into the stomach, often rupturing or damaging tissues; sometimes the tube enters the lungs instead. The tubes are sometimes left in a practitioner’s stomach for days or weeks, causing severe infections, or pulled out and reinserted repeatedly. The practitioners are often “fed” irritants such as highly concentrated salt water, hot pepper oil, boiling water, or detergent.
In the summer of 2003, the Gaoyang Forced Labour Camp began force-feeding Falun Gong practitioners with human urine and excrement; the government awarded them for this innovation, and sent labour camp staff from around the country to learn this procedure.
“I vividly remember my first hunger strike at the Harbin City Detention Centre. In order to force-feed me, the doctors at the Harbin City Detention Centre used a metal clamp to pry open my teeth and then pushed a thick rubber tube down to my stomach. My mouth was filled with blood and my body was covered in bruises after every force-feeding. Several people were there to beat and subdue me for these force-feedings. They would pour two big bowls of cold water mixed with corn flour into me, saying that it was for ‘stretching the stomach’. When I screamed, the police were afraid of others hearing me. They ordered inmates to gag and beat me even more.
“The force-feeding at the Wanjia Forced Labour Camp was even more violent and cruel. The doctors there used force-feeding as a torture method and didn’t care whether practitioners survived it or not.
“Before they force-fed me for the first time, I saw them grab a female Falun Gong practitioner named Shang by the hair and knock her head against the wall and floor. When she was finally unconscious, they forced the tube into her nose to force-feed her. There was no sterilization – they simply brushed the tube around in a basin, then forced it through her nose and down into her stomach. Then they injected ground corn grain mixed with cold water.
“After they’d finished with her, the two prison doctors turned around and looked at me. They stood there with their forceps and tools in their hands and said, ‘You see that? You’re next.’ After that, I was subjected to this kind of force-feeding every day in jail.
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“They would beat us to the point where we were almost unconscious before tying our arms and legs down and forcing the tubes through our noses and down into our stomachs. We were tied up to prevent us from pulling the tubes out because of the excruciating pain.
“On one occasion I witnessed a female practitioner named Guo Minxia being force-fed. The nurses grabbed Minxia’s hair and pinched her face and body. She was black and blue everywhere. Her whole body began to twitch. When I condemned the guards and doctors for what they were doing, they turned on me and beat me up as well.
“One day I heard the desperate cry of a man in the woman’s ward. It was the husband of a Falun Gong practitioner named Ding Yanhong. He had begged to be able to visit her, and when he finally was allowed to come in, they force-fed her right in front of him. This man cried terribly while his wife struggled in pain.
“I always knew that if I would simply write a letter denouncing Falun Gong, denouncing its teachings and promise to never practice again, I would be released immediately. But if it is wrong to believe in ‘Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance,’ what hope does humanity have? This persecution was forcing people to choose between their lives and their conscience. I knew that I was being forced to make that choice, and I chose my conscience because I knew that when good men and women renounce good, wholesome beliefs under pressure from a dictatorship, something much greater than us dies.”
“Policeman Zhu Wenyong directed four criminal inmates to stand on the practitioner’s four limbs while other inmates forced the practitioner’s mouth open with a toothbrush. They cut a plastic bottle into two halves and forced the open end of the bottle into the practitioner’s mouth. They then poured a whole packet (500 grams) of salt into the bottle, mixed with only a little water. All of the Falun Gong practitioners on hunger strike were force-fed in this manner. Some were force-fed with one packet of salt and some with two packets of salt. Female practitioner Zhang Chunmei was once force-fed with two packets of salt. She could not move afterwards, remained unconscious for several days and nights, and lost control of her bowels and bladder. In spite of her condition, policeman Zhu Wenyong repeatedly came to the cell to kick her, angrily claiming that she should stop ‘pretending to be dead.’
“In the beginning, when they force-fed [Falun] Dafa practitioner Gao Xianmin, one of the inmates witnessing the scene became frightened and fainted. Policeman Zhu Wenyong had the prisoner removed and replaced him with another one to continue the force-feeding. Gao Xianmin eventually died as a result of the brutal force-feeding...
“After Gao Xianmin died, the ‘610 Office’ authorities in the Tianhe District said that he had died of a heart attack. They also threatened Gao Xianmin’s family members not to tell anyone about what had happened...”
NEW YORK, October 25, 2001 (FDI) – Four days ago, an elderly couple in China went to visit their daughter, Yang Mei, who was being held in a detention center for her beliefs. They did not see her that day, nor will they ever see her again, for Yang Mei died earlier that morning, becoming the 28th practitioner of Falun Gong to have died in Hebei Province due to torture suffered while in police custody. She was 23 years old.
Yang Mei worked in a bank in Cangzhou, Hebei province. Those who knew her say she was an unpretentious and kind young woman. As a dedicated practitioner of Falun Dafa (Falun Gong), she was also a courageous person. This past summer, the police arrested her for handing out flyers containing information about what the Chinese regime is doing to carry out its persecution of people who practice Falun Gong.
The police in the Cangzhou Second Detention Center, where she was held, forced Yang Mei to do hard labor and tried to make her write letters to guarantee that she would stop practicing Falun Dafa. When she refused, they would tie her down by her wrists and ankles to an iron bed for several days and nights at a stretch without a break. On October 10th, she went on a hunger strike to protest this torture. Sources say she was brutally force-fed through a thick tube in the afternoon of October 19th. She passed away around 6 o’clock the next morning, October 20th.
October 20th happened to be the day her parents would go to visit her at the detention center, unaware that their daughter was already dead. The guards would reveal nothing about her situation, however, and sent them home. As soon as they got home, they received a call from the detention center to go back. Back at the center, the guards kept talking in circles until, after 2 p.m., they finally informed her parents of her death.
Yang Mei’s parents were devastated, but it is unlikely they will find any recourse for their grief. Instructions from “higher authorities” state that if Yang Mei’s family requests an autopsy of her corpse, the corpse must immediately be forcibly cremated, according to sources familiar with her case.
... At the end of July 2000, Ms. Zhang was again arrested, this time for distributing information about the persecution of Falun Gong. She was again sent to the Feidong Detention Center and handcuffed in heavy shackles. She and other practitioners started a hunger strike to protest the torture. As a punitive measure, the prison guards force-fed them. After a prolonged hunger strike and forced-feeding, Ms. Zhang became very weak and ran a high fever. The detention center officials sent her to a hospital for a check-up. The doctor’s diagnosis revealed that her lungs had been punctured during the inept force-feeding. Fearful that she would die in the detention center, they sent her home on August 24, 2000. Ms. Zhang became so weak and thin that she could not get out of bed. She also had great difficulty talking. Even so, the city Prosecutor issued an indictment against her for practicing Falun Gong. A clerk was sent to deliver the indictment. After looking at Ms. Zhang, however, the clerk went away shaking his head.
On January 17, 2001, at 1:03 p.m., Ms. Zhang passed away after suffering five months of pain. She left behind two daughters, one 9 years old and the other 12 years of age.
Mr. Zhang was an undergraduate student at the Business Administration School of the Shandong Industrial University, Jinan City, Shandong Province.
On January 1, 2001, Mr. Zhang was arrested in Beijing because he appealed peacefully on behalf of Falun Gong. At the police station, the police hit him with eight electric batons simultaneously and burned him with cigarettes. This went on for almost twelve hours. In a span of four days, Mr. Zhang was transferred to four different police stations. At each police station, he was tortured and sustained extensive injuries all over his body.
On May 17, 2001, the police arrested Mr. Zhang again. The policemen used their fists and electric batons to hit sensitive areas on his body and repeatedly kicked him. More than an hour later, he was so badly beaten that he began to vomit blood and his nose became bloody. The policemen tied him up with ropes and sent him to a jail cell. He began a hunger strike to protest the maltreatment. On the sixth day, the policemen ordered the inmates to force-feed him. They handcuffed him to a chair and repeatedly tried to insert a feeding tube into his nose. On the fifth try, Mr. Zhang lost consciousness and died from the force-feeding.