Lost in the labour camp — Chinese prisoner of conscience Jennifer Zeng

Worst Thing Ever

In the 1990s, Jennifer Zeng was a model citizen of the reform era in China. She had earned a Master's degree from Peking University, and worked as a research scientist at an institute affiliated with the Chinese state. She was a wife, mother, and a member of the Communist Party.

But her life was radically upended in July of 1999, when the Communist Party launched a campaign to "eradicate" Falun Gong, the Buddhist faith system to which she belonged.

Jennifer was sent without trial to a reeducation-through-labour camp, where authorities employed physical and psychological torture methods to forcibly "reeducate" her. She details the use of sleep deprivation, stress positions, electric batons and violent sexual abuse, and describes the torment of watching helplessly as her co-religionists were tortured.

The greatest torment, however, was psychological. Jennifer felt a responsibility to document the horrors of the labour camp system and expose these abuses to the wider world. But the only way to guarantee her escape from the labour camp was to comply with the guards' demands that she betray her principles.