Masanjia Labor Camp
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SHENYANG
Masanjia Labor Camp
No exact address, Masanjia Town, Yuhong District, Liaoning Province
Phone: +86(0)24-89210822、89212252、89210454
Click here for a list of Masanjia police and officials reportedly involved in the persecution of Falun Gong adherents
Olympic venue: Shenyang Wulihe Stadium
Event: Preliminary soccer matches
Directions to Masanjia Labor Camp: View directions below or click here to download a .doc (28kb)
A: Taoxian Airport: 桃仙机场
B: Shenyang North Train Station: 沈阳北站
C: Masanjia Labor Camp: 马三家劳教所
D: Shenyan Olympic Stadium: 沈阳奥林匹克体育中心体育场
From Taoxian Airport to Masanjia town office: Total: 54 km
- Enter onto Shendangaosurukou going northeast 3.8 km
- Turn left on Shendangaosu 9.1 km
- Turn right on Xiashengouchurukou 0.9 km
- Turn right on Shenhuangaosu going west 14.6 km
- Turn right on Shenhuangaosu going north 16.4 km
- Turn right on Hongqitaichurukou .5 km
- Turn right on Danpogonglu 7.4 km
- Turn right on Xincaixian 1.3 km
Destination: Masanjia town office, Masanjia Town, Yuhong District, Liaoning Province. Total: 54 km
From Shenyang Beizhan (train station) to Masanjia town office: Total: 23.7 km
- Drive southeast 195 m
- Turn left onto Youhaojie 353 m
- Enter Huandao going south 162 m
- Keep right onto Haerbinlu going southwest 288 m
- Slight turn on left onro Haerbinlu going west 0.8 m
- Keep left onto Haerbinlu going west 8.4 km
- Keep right onto Zhonggongbeijie going northeast 279 m
- Keep right onto Guangyelu going northwest 11.9 km
- Turn right onto Xincaixian going northeast 1.3 km
- Turn left and continue going west 51 m
Destination: Masanjia town office, Masanjia Town, Yuhong District, Liaoning Province. Total: 23.7 km
About Masanjia Labor Camp
Description:
Masanjia is widely known as one of China’s most brutal labor camps, particularly for Falun Gong adherents. It has been in operation since 1957 and some 36,000 detainees had passed through there in its first four decades of operation. Since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999, it has become one of the largest detention centers for practitioners in China.
According to Falun Gong practitioner Zhao Shuhuan, who was incarcerated in Masanjia from Sept 2000-April 2001, Masanjia is a “huge, huge compound. There are three groups of buildings very far from each other so you never know who’s in there.” A new building now houses all prisoners, says Zhao. Similar to the obscuring techniques used by the authorities at other camps described in this booklet, the Masanjia compound includes a large amount of acreage devoted to farmland and orchards.
In October, 2000, international media reported on the allegation of large scale sexual abuse in this camp where 18 female practitioners were reportedly stripped naked and thrown into male jail cells where they were gang raped, as a form of torture aimed at breaking their will and forcing them to renounce their faith in Falun Gong. The Falun Dafa Information Center has documented the deaths of 11 Falun Gong practitioners in this camp.
Prisoners:
The compound holds both male and female prisoners. The exact number of people detained at the camp is unclear, but estimates suggest it is several thousand. Zhao reports that in the section in which she was incarcerated, each Falun Gong practitioner was monitored by two former, or “reformed” practitioners, who had renounced their faith following severe physical and psychological abuse.
Products:
Costume jewelry, handcrafts such as “butterfly fairies,” vines, hats, boutonnieres, hairpins and other items.
Conditions:
Falun Gong practitioners in Masanjia are reported to be subjected to beatings and torture including electric shocks, force-feeding, injections of nerve-damaging drugs and anti-Falun Gong “re-education” sessions. Due to the prolonged mental and physical torture, and extremely poor living conditions, some of the adherents detained at Masanjia have become disabled or are suffering from serious illnesses.
Despite some detainees’ ill health, the guards continue to torture practitioners and force them to work up to 20 hours every day. Zhao reports that during the three months of summer when she was detained there, she was allowed to shower at most five times. There was no toothpaste, no shampoo, no soap, and no sanitary products for menstruating women available. Detainees received inadequate food rations and were deprived of sleep.
Zhao reports a tightly guarded environment in Masanjia, in which prisoners, particularly Falun Gong adherents, were prohibited from communicating with one another, even through body language, including in their cells. Communication through eye contact was forbidden. If adherents were caught looking at one another, they would be reported by “reformed” practitioners, reprimanded and possibly beaten.
Click here for details about Masanjia officials and police reported to have been active in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.
Individual case:
Former Prisoner of Conscience Zhao Shuhuan, 54, from Shenyang City, incarcerated at Masanjia from September 2000 to April 2001, currently resides in the United States
As in the case of other adherents who refuse to renounce Falun Gong, during her time at Masanjia, Zhao was subject to severe abuse. In the winter of 2000, Masanjia guards stripped her, put a light piece of cloth over the inside of her thighs and repeatedly pinched until her skin came off and the wounds festered with pus. They then kicked the wounds with the tips of their shoes, leaving large scars on her thighs that remain visible today.
During her detention at the camp, Zhao was also force fed, whereby a plastic tube was violently shoved into her stomach through either her nose or mouth. During one such incident, Zhao felt her stomach fill with blood. She was also injected with psychoactive drugs which caused her to feel severely ill and disoriented.
Show Tours:
According to Zhao, in the time before several visits from foreign media, camp officials purchased sports equipment such as badminton sets and decorated the compound. Similarly, while under normal circumstances, two prisoners would share a twin bed only two and a half feet wide; however, before a tour, half the prisoners would be moved elsewhere, enabling the remaining prisoners to have their own beds. When the tour was over, the two returned to sharing a small bed. In addition, only “reformed” practitioners would be able to see reporters—those whose faith was firm would be sent to a far corner of the compound. In the spring of 2001, a human rights group came to investigate Masanjia. According to Zhao, ten Falun Gong practitioners in her group were hidden away. Of those ten, two have since been tortured to death.
Message for reporters from a former prisoner:
“The communists will never let those reporters see the truth.
“They will transfer practitioners to someplace else. I don’t believe they can find anything on a tour of the facility.
“Make sure to tell reporters, they will not see the firm practitioners – they will have been sent somewhere already. Everything they see will be an illusion.”
—Zhao Shuhuan, July 27, 2008
Zhao Shuhuan currently resides in the United States and is available for an interview upon request.
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