At 10 A.M. on September 29 just after the Mid-Autumn Festival, a dozen members of the German Human Rights Association and Falun Gong practitioners excitedly waited at Frankfurt Airport for the arrival of a long awaited guest from Beijing. As the arrivals door opened, a Chinese woman pushing a baggage cart walked toward the welcoming group with a smile. After a 14-hour flight, Xiong Wei was back in Germany, four years after she left.

Xiong Wei, 33, studied at Berlin Industrial University from 1993 to 1999. During this period, she also started to practice Falun Gong. She went back to China in 2000 to work for a German Company in Beijing. On January 5, 2002, Xiong Wei was detained by plain-clothes police officers for handing out informational flyers about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to Beijing Women’s Labor Camp for two years.

After learning about Xiong Wei’s detention in Beijing, the German Human Rights Association and Falun Gong practitioners in Germany coordinated a series of activities that included collecting signatures and mailing postcards to the labor camp. With the help of the German government and people from all walks of life, Xiong Wei was released early this year and safely returned to Germany nine months later.

Immediately after her arrival in Germany, Xiong Wei was invited to the Frankfurt headquarters of International Human Rights Association. She was deeply moved, and expressed her appreciation for the association’s help in regaining her freedom. She told them her story of being detained at Qinghe Detaining Center, Beijing Dispatch Center and Beijing Women’s Labor Camp.

Hard Labor and Torture

Xiong Wei clearly remembers how she tirelessly labored day and night in Beijing Women’s Labor Camp. She would begin at 7:00 A.M. and work until 10:00 P.M., or sometimes even as late as 2:00 A.M. Oftentimes she worked on packaging disposable chopsticks. A small piece of packaging paper is used to wrap the ends of the chopstick, and printed on it is “Sanitized Hygienic Chopsticks.” However, there was no procedure to sanitize the chopsticks. To accelerate the wrapping of the chopsticks, the packaging paper is covered with a soaked cloth. Clean cloths specifically for wrapping the chopsticks were never provided, so cloths for washing one’s feet or cleaning were used instead. There are no words to describe the “dirtiness” of wrapping the chopsticks.

Every worker had a daily quota to meet. No one was allowed to go to bed without finishing it. To meet the quota, “We were wrapping chopsticks so fast, seven pairs in two seconds, that we did not know what our hands were doing anymore.”

Beijing Women’s Labor Camp, formerly Tiantanghe Labor Camp or Xin’an Labor Camp, used to house 100 to 200 detainees, most of whom were drug addicts or prostitutes. After the crackdown on Falun Gong, the labor camp dramatically increased its numbers of detainees from about 100 in July 2000 to nearly 1,000 by April 2001.

In June 2003, a 24-hour television series, “Life is Innocent,” was presented by China’s Ministry of Justice. The TV series, co-produced by Legal Video Center and Xi’an Dingma Video Arts Co. featured Beijing Women’s Labor Camp in the background and showed how the policemen were kindly “helping” Falun Gong practitioners. Xiong Wei says the true purpose of the show was to slander Falun Gong, incite hatred towards practitioners and to hide the persecution taking place in the labor camps.

From the brightly colored exterior of the building, one might assume there is some warmth in the camp, Xiong Wei says. However, what really happens inside is the brutal persecution of practitioners who do not renounce the practice of Falun Gong. One torture method commonly used on practitioners is forcing them to squat down for a long period of time, which Xiong Wei experienced for two weeks. This type of torture causes excruciating pain that one cannot stand up without the help of others.

In the end of November 2002, the atmosphere of the labor camp was filled with tension. The detainees were frequently asked to clean the building. Policemen decorated the corridors with green plants and hung up white wall tapestries, which were all taken down two days after a foreign delegation inspecting the labor camp left.

Future Plans

Karl Hafen, president of the International Society for Human Rights was gratified with the successful rescue of Xiong Wei. “We have heard Xiong tell her experiences of being detained in the center and labor camp,” he said. “I am positive she can provide us more information about the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, so we can help more people persecuted in China.”

The group plans to help a Chinese student studying in Germany rescue his mother who is also detained in Beijing Women’s Labor Camp because she practices Falun Gong.

Caroline, an undergraduate at Heidelberg, Germany was ecstatic to see Xiong Wei released from the labor camp and back to freedom. Two years ago, Caroline and her two younger sisters appealed to the Chinese consulate to release Xiong Wei by riding their bicycles from Heidelberg to Bonn. On the way to Bonn, they visited various media and government officials to seek help. Caroline says that although Xiong Wei is back in Germany, the persecution of Falun Gong in China has not stopped yet. “I will continue to help those Falun Gong practitioners whose names I know and who are being persecuted in China.”

Filled with delight and trepidation, Xiong Wei says, “I am very happy that I can freely practice what I believe in from now on, but when I think of the practitioners who only want to be good Samaritans and are still in such painful circumstances in China, I can’t stay happy anymore.”