If you happened to pass through Caiwan Village, Huaqiao Township, Xinjin County, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, you would most likely take it for an ordinary suburban compound. In reality, this is one of the most frequently mentioned sites of Falun Gong persecution on Minghui.org -- known colloquially as the “Xinjin Brainwashing Class,” though its official signboard reads “Chengdu Legal Education Center.”
This is one of the CCP's favorite forms of disguise: giving persecution sites innocuous, harmless-sounding names. Resorts, guesthouses, retirement homes, health clinics, drug rehabilitation centers, psychiatric hospitals -- places whose names conjure images of leisure or treatment -- have for more than two decades been the sites, one after another, of crimes destroying people's faith, trampling human rights, and even torturing and killing, all carried out with total impunity.
The CCP uses psychiatric hospitals to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. (Minghui.org)
I. A Secret Institution With No Limits -- The Brainwashing Class
The Xinjin Brainwashing Class was converted in 2003 from the former Xinjin County detention shelter and drug rehabilitation center, jointly run by the Sichuan provincial and Chengdu municipal “610 Offices.” Since its founding, it has carried out more than 1,000 instances of illegal detention. In 2013, the same year the internationally condemned forced-labor-camp system was officially abolished, the Xinjin Brainwashing Class instead received millions in funding for reconstruction and was formally established under its signboard. Here, there is no legal limit at all -- a citizen's freedom can be arbitrarily stripped away without so much as a single document or procedure; a word from the street office or the “610 Office” is enough to carry out an abduction and confinement at will. Fan Ying of Shuangliu was illegally detained here for five years; Li Xihui, a cadre at Sichuan Radio, was illegally detained here for as long as seven years.
The Xinjin Brainwashing Class in Chengdu, Sichuan (the so-called “Legal Education Center”) is a living hell for the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. (Minghui.org)
More absurd still, this institution does not even have an official organizational code. When family members report it to the police, the moment officers hear it is the Xinjin Brainwashing Class, they simply say “we can't do anything about that”; when lawyers are retained to file complaints with the procuratorate, the procuratorate likewise dares not accept the case. This is a secret institution that operates entirely beyond the reach of law and public oversight -- no paperwork is needed to abduct someone, no trial is needed to detain them, and no one dares intervene even when torture is carried out.
On April 29, 2009, Xie Deqing, a 69-year-old retired engineer from the Chengdu Survey and Design Institute, was abducted and sent to the Xinjin Brainwashing Class. In just over twenty days, this once-healthy man was tortured to the point of becoming skin and bones, suffering constant chest pain. The so-called “supervisors” -- Yin Decai, Bao Xiaomu, Wang Hongqiang, and others -- used methods of poisoning unknown to the outside world to bring him to this state. Seeing how serious things had become, the brainwashing class sent Xie Deqing home to shift responsibility away from itself, and late on the night of May 27, he died of his unjust suffering. When his family wanted an autopsy to determine the cause of death, over a hundred riot police suddenly stormed the memorial hall early the next morning and forcibly seized his body.
Xie Deqing, tortured to the point of unbearable chest pain, his face contorted in agony. (Minghui.org)
Xie Deqing was not the only victim. Wang Mingrong, former head nurse at Chengdu Ankang Hospital, was abducted in 2011 and died from the persecution in less than ten days -- the seventh confirmed death of a practitioner inside the Xinjin Brainwashing Class.
The most widely reported form of torture inside the Xinjin Brainwashing Class is “violent force-feeding” -- Falun Gong practitioners who go on hunger strikes to resist the persecution have their mouths forced open with a mouth gag and are then made to swallow concentrated chili water, concentrated brine, sewage, boiling water, and even unidentified drugs that destroy the nervous system. Li Xiaojun, a senior engineer at the Environmental Protection Bureau, had his upper front teeth pried out during force-feeding; Deputy Director Huang Min was pinned to the ground and force-fed, her esophagus punctured and bleeding, while a “supervisor” sneered: “Pull it out then -- we'll just put it back in. Either way, you're the one who suffers.”
A demonstration of the torture method: violent force-feeding. (Minghui.org)
Beyond physical torture, many Falun Gong practitioners, after spending time at these brainwashing classes, gradually develop symptoms such as lethargy, bulging eyes, and auditory or visual hallucinations.
The same methods of persecution have played out at brainwashing classes across the country. At the “Laodaohe Brainwashing Class” in Changsha, Hunan, more than a thousand practitioners have been detained over more than a decade; in 2012, 65-year-old Jiang Meilan died from her injuries just 23 days after being taken there, her entire body covered in wounds and bleeding from below the waist. Gao Yutian, deputy researcher at the Changsha “610 Office” at the time, declared bluntly: “Right now the whole point is forced brainwashing -- violent 'transformation'!”
And the torture known as “eagle-taming” -- keeping a victim awake around the clock for dozens of consecutive days -- has become standard practice at nearly every brainwashing class, used systematically to break victims' will.
According to statistics compiled by Minghui.org, between July 1999 and March 2019, as many as 3,640 brainwashing classes with confirmed, specific locations have been documented, spread across every single province in China.
II. Psychiatric Hospitals: Torture Sites Where Even a Verdict Isn't Bothered With
If brainwashing classes already exist in a lawless zone, psychiatric hospitals represent perhaps the most sinister link in this entire machinery of persecution, because here the CCP does not even bother with the most basic procedure of handing down a “sentence.” A single claim of “mental illness” is enough to see a perfectly sane person locked away indefinitely and forcibly injected with drugs that destroy the central nervous system. When this system is turned against Falun Gong practitioners, its cruelty far exceeds that used against ordinary petitioners, because what the authorities aim to destroy is not some specific act, but the very belief itself.
According to an investigation by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, at least a thousand mentally healthy Falun Gong practitioners have, over a span of five years, been locked up in psychiatric hospitals and drug rehabilitation centers and forcibly injected or force-fed drugs that destroy the central nervous system; many have lost their memory, developed mental disorders, or become paralyzed, and at least 15 have died directly as a result of forced injections or force-feeding of such drugs. Pictured is a psychiatric hospital in Henan Province where Falun Gong practitioners have been held. (Minghui.org)
Su Gang, a 32-year-old computer engineer at Shandong Qilu Petrochemical, was in good physical and mental health when he was sent to Weifang Changle Psychiatric Hospital on May 23, 2000. Medical staff forcibly injected him daily with large doses of drugs that destroy the central nervous system. Nine days later, when family members saw him, his gaze had gone blank and his limbs had grown rigid; nine days after that, Su Gang died of heart failure -- in just 18 days, a healthy young man was killed outright by so-called “treatment.”
Guo Min, an employee of the Xishui County State Tax Bureau in Hubei, was detained in 2000 for carrying Falun Gong books, and the chairman of her workplace's labor union had her sent directly to a psychiatric hospital. Over the following eleven years she was repeatedly detained and forced to take drugs that destroy the central nervous system, leaving her without a menstrual period for six years and her abdomen swollen as though she were nine months pregnant. She died from the abuse in 2011 at the age of just 38.
Liu Xiaolian of Chibi, Hubei, was abducted in 2006 for refusing to sign a statement renouncing her practice, and after being injected with unidentified drugs, completely lost the ability to speak, becoming mute. Enduring immense pain, she wrote down her experience by hand and sent it to Minghui.org, only to be detained again that same year; she was released only once authorities were convinced she had no more than twenty-some days left to live, and died of her unjust suffering a little over a month later. When the local “610 Office” chief learned of her death, his first reaction was to call a subordinate to “congratulate” him: “We did it.”
Liu Xiaolian, nearly seventy, was persecuted until her entire body was swollen and she lay on the brink of death. (Minghui.org)
Xie Zhiying of Akesu, Xinjiang, suffered nearly the same fate, sent twice to psychiatric hospitals and losing the ability to speak as a result; she was then locked inside her home by her workplace for seven years. When she died in 2011, her family was not even able to see her body.
Most absurd of all is the case of Yang Baochun, a worker at a dyeing and weaving factory in Handan, Hebei. He was first persecuted at a forced-labor camp until he lost a limb to amputation; that was still not enough, so the “610 Office,” the labor camp, and his workplace worked together to falsely accuse him of having a mental illness, sending him to a psychiatric hospital, where drugs that destroy the nervous system were secretly mixed into his food.
After that he was sent to psychiatric hospitals three separate times, subjected to drug-based torment for five or six years altogether. By 2009, when his family finally brought him home, Yang Baochun had completely lost his sanity.
After being persecuted into disability, Handan Falun Gong practitioner Yang Baochun was illegally held at Yongkang Psychiatric Hospital for five or six years. (Minghui.org)
In the end, his family had no choice but to send him back into a psychiatric hospital themselves -- a desperate choice made only after the CCP had already utterly destroyed him, leaving a family with no other option left.
It is worth noting that the CCP is not actually without relevant law. The 2012 Mental Health Law explicitly states that “hospitalization for mental disorders shall follow the principle of voluntariness” -- but for Falun Gong practitioners, this law has almost never truly been enforced.
Conclusion
From brainwashing classes to psychiatric hospitals, the CCP has built one and the same logic: no paperwork needed to abduct someone, no trial needed to detain them, and no accountability needed to commit violence.
Not one of these victims actually suffered from any real mental illness -- quite the opposite: many of them had freed themselves from long-standing chronic illnesses precisely by practicing Falun Gong. What the CCP truly wants to “cure” has never been an illness, but a person's refusal to give up their faith itself. For twenty-seven years now, these black jails disguised as resorts, training centers, and hospitals have remained hidden in ordinary towns and cities across mainland China, continuing to devour, one after another, lives that were once kind, healthy, and full of hope for the future.