Northeast China Prison Under Lockdown After Deaths Exposed Online

New York—A prison camp in Northeast China has been put under lockdown after three Falun Gong detainees died there within two weeks and evidence of the sudden deaths was posted online. In an effort to prevent additional details from being leaked, guards and prisoners alike are having their phones monitored and the victims' families are being tailed by security agents.

Torture and abuse intensified at Jiamusi Prison in Heilongjiang province in February after personnel received orders in early 2011 to increase the "transformation rate" among Falun Gong practitioners held at the camp. The orders were issued as part of a nationwide three-year Communist Party campaign to reinvigorate transformation efforts, a campaign documented last week in an essay by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC). As a result, three middle-aged male practitioners died between February 26 and March 8, 2011. Within days of the deaths, news of the incident was reported on the overseas Falun Gong Minghui.org website. 

The accounts included a photo of one victim's corpse showing signs of severe beating, video footage of another victim hospitalized before his death, and the names of key prison staff involved in their torture. This was despite efforts by prison personnel to cover-up the deaths by removing one practitioner's body from the hospital immediately and quickly cremating another. 

In response to information on the deaths being leaked online so quickly, the prison was put under lockdown, and on March 11 agents from the Public Security and State Security Bureaus reportedly visited the prison to investigate not the cause of the deaths, but the source of the leak. Given the level of detail in accounts of the deaths, the agents apparently concluded that some non-Falun Gong prisoners or personnel at the camp must have informed family members or others of what had happened. This triggered tightened restrictions on guards, detainees, and victims' families alike.

An additional 70 Falun Gong practitioners are still being held at Jiamusi Prison. As their family members have reacted with panic to news of the deaths and demanded to see their loved ones, some reported being beaten by guards or subjected to various forms of humiliation.

"Besides the inhumaneness of these killings, what is striking about this case is how many people have been affected," says Falun Dafa Information Center executive director Levi Browde. "Prison guards, inmates, doctors, nurses, and judges have been dragged by the Communist Party into inflicting horrific pain on their fellow citizens."

"Meanwhile, dozens of other families are panicked that they will be the next ones to receive the fateful phone call that their loved one has been killed. This incident epitomizes the enormous toll that the persecution of Falun Gong is having on all levels of Chinese society."