Forced-feeding

This painting illustrates one of the most common and dangerous forms of abuse Falun Gong adherents are regularly subjected to.

Force-feeding is a torture method that labor camp staff often use on Falun Gong practitioners, particularly on those who have staged hunger strikes to protest their unlawful detention. However, it is certainly not an attempt to nourish or feed; rather, it is a brutal procedure that has resulted in at least 100 deaths. The force-feeding is most often carried out by labour camp staff with no medical training, or by criminal inmates who are coerced to assist. Firm, unsanitized tubes are forced into a practitioner’s nose and into the stomach, often rupturing or damaging tissues; sometimes the tube enters the lungs instead. The tubes are sometimes left in a practitioner’s stomach for days or weeks, causing severe infections, or pulled out and reinserted repeatedly. The practitioners are often “fed” irritants such as highly concentrated salt water, hot pepper oil, boiling water, detergent, or human excrement.