The sect has called the camp ''a living hell,'' where guards shock female Falun Gong followers with electric batons and toss them naked into cells with male prisoners. Reporters were shown a neatly kept exercise yard where inmates dressed in blue and white track suits played basketball, a clean dining hall and kitchen where cooks used shovels to stir giant woks of food and rice, a visitation room and an office building. I still think it's good,'' said Luo Xiujie, who said she has practiced Falun Gong for five years and was sent to the camp for protesting in Beijing. In one room, a police officer and a follower who said she has recanted pressed an elderly inmate to do the same. There is hope for everyone.'' Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with its slow-motion exercises and philosophies drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and Li's ideas.
Followers say it promotes health, moral living and even supernatural powers.
The government banned the group as a threat to communist rule and public safety, and thousands have been detained in the crackdown. The government accuses Li of controlling followers for his own political and financial ends. The section of the camp for female practitioners is of one of nine in Masanjia, said its director, Zhang Chaoying. The facility, spread across 4,900 acres with fields and factories, was established 44 years ago and holds more than 3,000 inmates, he said. He said 483 female practitioners are in the camp, although reporters saw only about a third that number.