(Clearwisdom.net) The Huangpu District Brainwashing Center, or "Ideological Education Center," was one of the many brainwashing centers funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). What kind of an organization was it?
1. General Information about Huangpu District Brainwashing Center
Established in early 2001, the brainwashing center was officially known as "Huangpu District Ideological Education Center." It was located inside the Huangpu District Police Department Compulsory Drug Rehabilitation Center and controlled by the Huangpu District 610 Office.
The brainwashing center was infamous for its brutalities and high "transformation" rate of practitioners. The Liwan District Brainwashing Center in Guangzhou City later merged with it, making it the worst place in Guangzhou for the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Mr. Zhang Mengye, an alumnus of Tsinghua University and former classmate of current CCP head Hu Jintao, was taken to the brainwashing center on May 18, 2002. He was cruelly tortured and suffered greatly.
Towards the end of 2003, the CCP began to close down the brainwashing centers in each district in Guangzhou, except for the Huangpu District Brainwashing Center. Its name then changed to Guangzhou City Legal Education School and was controlled by the Guangzhou City 610 Office, until it finally closed in 2004.
A. Infamous, Cruel Prison
The CCP didn't disclose the existence of the Huangpu District Brainwashing Center to the public and hid it inside the Drug Rehabilitation Center. Between the 4th and 5th floors, only a sign that read "Legal Education School" was hung, and a separate, locked iron door was installed. Female practitioners were detained in one of the six rooms on the 5th floor and the male practitioners on the 6th floor. Cameras were installed in all of the rooms on the 5th floor, and practitioners had to sleep on the hard floor. All the practitioners had to take care of all their daily needs in that one room. A small room towards the end of hall on the 5th floor was where the perpetrators monitored practitioners around the clock and where practitioners were tortured.
Practitioners were forced to watch videotapes that slandered Falun Dafa and its founder, and write so-called "thought reports." The steadfast practitioners were taken to the torture room on the 5th floor at about 10:00 p.m. When the female practitioners heard the sound of tables and chairs being dragged in the room and the opening of the heavy iron door, they knew someone would be tortured.
B. 610 Office: Controlling Things Behind the Scenes
Personnel from the 610 Office were the main perpetrators of the torture of practitioners, even though they didn't physically torture the practitioners themselves.
They arranged fabricated scenes, such as forcing "transformed" practitioners to go downstairs and participate in activities while they were videotaped. This way, they could deceive the public about the real crimes being committed in the brainwashing center.
Wang Youcheng, in his 50s, from the Huangpu District 610 Office, was in charge of the Huangpu District Brainwashing Center and the main person in charge of persecuting practitioners.
Wang forced practitioners to listen to his "lecture" every morning. He would tell them, "There are over 60 torture methods. Let's see how long you can last. We know that for those transferred here, you will hit your head against the wall when you can't endure it any more. We have already conducted a study. [You can] go ahead and hit the wall since the majority of the time, you won't be able to kill yourself that way. Also, don't think about jumping out the window. I know that many of you would rather jump out the window than write the three statements. We have done all the preparation already. It's impossible for you to jump out of here. Many of you will cry out when you can no longer bear [the pain] and have to write the three statements. Your cries can be heard from one mountaintop to another." When practitioners were force-fed toilet water after being tortured, he said, "We know how much water a person can take without being in critical danger. What we want is to make it more miserable for you to live than to die."
Wang Youcheng often organized meetings to criticize practitioners. Steadfast practitioners were dragged to the stage, where Wang would shout and curse at them with the speaker on maximum volume, as if it was the Cultural Revolution again.
C. Hiring Thugs
The people who were actually torturing practitioners at the brainwashing center were thugs hired from the outside and called "instructors." They were on shifts around the clock to physically torture practitioners. Head instructor Qiu Chaohua and deputy head Zhan Yonglong were the most evil among them.
Qiu Chaohua often said to practitioners, "I have many torture instruments to use on you. If I beat you to death, we will just carry your body out. What can you do?" Once, practitioner Ms. Tan Shaowei lost consciousness during the day after she was tortured for a whole night. When other practitioners tried to help her, Qiu Chaohua yelled at them, "What are you doing? Anything worth watching? Isn't it just a fainting? Even death is just a death. When someone is dead, she will just be dragged out and it will be counted as a suicide!"
Qiu Chaohua was never ashamed of torturing female practitioners and led the way in torturing every practitioner. He beat or dragged practitioners by their hair at will. He even did the same thing to those who were the same age as his mother.
There were also several teenage girls who were hired to persecute practitioners. Initially, they were kind to the practitioners, but changed their attitudes as the guards continuously fed them lies about Dafa. They went from being unwilling to persecute practitioners to viciously participating in the tortures. Since they were not as strong as the male thugs, they would pinch and stab practitioners' sensitive body parts with a needle instead. At the age of 17, they showed no mercy even when torturing elderly ladies as old as their grandmothers.
D. Restriction of Information
To avoid being exposed, the perpetrators at the brainwashing center tortured practitioners only late at night. Practitioners were forced to wear long sleeved shirts and pants to cover up the injuries sustained from the beatings. They were also forced to apply medication to the injuries and to wash the bloodstains from their clothes right away. The practitioners were not allowed to have outside visitors until their bodies "recovered." They were also threatened to not disclose the persecution to the public.
Practitioner Ms. Xu Ming, a teacher at Guangzhou City Foreign Language Art Institute, mentioned the torture in a letter to her father. She was considered to be "leaking state secrets" and the letter was confiscated. As a result, she was not allowed to meet her family members.
Practitioner Ms. Shen Li suffered unimaginable torture. She was stripped naked and hung upside down while immersed in cold water. She was also deprived of sleep. She told her mother over the phone that she couldn't bear the torture any more. Immediately after that, her mother was illegally arrested by a 610 Office agent and detained in the brainwashing center because their phone had been tapped.
E. Forcing Practitioners and Their Families to Show Gratitude
At the Huangpu District Brainwashing Center, many practitioners were tortured to the limit of their endurance. When they could no longer bear the pain and yielded to the evil, they realized that they had betrayed their sacred belief and it was a great insult to their character. This type of spiritual torture was in many ways more painful than the physical torture. Many practitioners didn't cry out when enduring the tortures, but they cried loudly when writing the three statements. It is hard to fully describe that kind of humiliation.
After writing the three statements, the "transformed" practitioners had to write "transforming" materials. If what they wrote didn't meet the authorities' requirements or didn't express gratitude to them, the practitioner was labeled as being "incompletely 'transformed'" or "not 'transformed' from the heart." They also pressured practitioners' families to send the brainwashing center a banner as a gesture of appreciation.
