Persecution Claims Over Twenty Lives in July and August 2021
Falun Gong practitioners persecuted to death in July and August 2021 Upper row (left to right): Zhou Xianwen, Fu Guihua, Sun Xiujun Lower row (left to right): Chu Liwen, Ma Ying, Guo Qi
The deaths of 24 Falun Gong practitioners were reported in July and August 2021, bringing the confirmed number of deaths in 2021 to 91.
One of the newly reported 24 death cases took place in 2018. Three occurred in 2020, eleven in the first half of 2021, six in July 2021 and three in August 2021. The delay in the reporting of the cases was caused primarily by the strict censorship in China, which makes it difficult for Minghui.org correspondents to collect and send out information.
The 24 practitioners, 17 of whom are women, were from 12 provinces and municipalities. The top four provinces with the most newly reported deaths were Liaoning (4), Heilongjiang (4), Jilin (3), and Shandong (3). Gansu and Sichuan each had two cases. Hunan, Henan, Hebei, Xinjiang, Shanghai and Chongqing each had one case.
Among the five practitioners who died in custody, two of them, including a woman in her 70s, died two weeks into their detention, and a third practitioner died two months into her detention. Most other practitioners passed away after suffering decades of displacement, harassment, incarceration and torture.
The 24 practitioners came from all walks of life, including a county-level government official, a pharmacist, an engineer, an assistant bank director and a teacher. Excluding the three practitioners whose ages were unknown, the practitioners’ ages were between 50 and 85 years old, with an average age of 65.
Below are select cases.
Deaths after Long Term Harassment and Torture
After Years of Persecution, Liaoning Woman Passes Away
Guan Fengxia, a Daqing City, Liaoning Province resident, was arrested and held at a brainwashing center from September 1999 to January 2000. She was put under house arrest at her workplace, Daqing Railway Station, for five months. Her husband was also detained for practicing Falun Gong at this time, leaving their 12-year-old child home alone. After she was released, she was demoted from a station conductor to a janitor.
Guan was arrested when she was on her way to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong on June 21, 2000, and detained in Qiqihar Railway Police Department for 45 days. After her release, she was put under house arrest at her workplace from August to December 2000. Her family was forced to pay 2,000 yuan in exchange for her release.
Guan tried to go to Beijing again on December 29, 2000, but was intercepted. She was given two years of forced labor in Shuanghe Women’s Forced Labor Camp in Qiqihar, where she suffered brutal torture. She was deprived of sleep, subjected to beatings, confined in a small cell, administered unknown drugs against her will, and forced to do heavy labor.
When she was released from the labor camp, her husband was not home because he was serving a seven-year prison term in Daqing prison. She struggled to raise their son by herself.
The years of persecution took a heavy toll on Guan’s health, which caused her health to deteriorate in the past two years. She passed away on March 5, 2021 at the age of 60.
Mr. Jiang Guobo was a former member of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee in Weifang City, Shandong Province. At the end of November 2000, he was given three years of forced labor term and detained in the Changle Forced Labor Camp. While detained, Jiang was also injected with a toxic drug.
On December 19th, 2000, after two days of injections, Jiang’s eyes began to swell. He also felt pain in his kidneys and became disoriented. Although he was released on medical parole, he was taken back to the labor camp in March 2001. He was tortured for another six months until he was again near the brink of death. The guards extorted 5,000 yuan from his family before letting them take him home on medical parole.
Jiang was arrested again on October 3, 2005 and was taken to a forced labor camp for the second forced labor term of three years on November 2, 2005. In March 2006, Jiang was released on medical parole. Three years later, Jiang was arrested again on February 27, 2009. The Kuiwen District Court secretly tried him in December 2009 and sentenced him to five years in prison. He was taken to Jinan Prison in Shandong Province around January 15, 2010.
After Jiang returned home in 2014, he suffered long term complications from the involuntary drug administration in prison. He often felt sick and vomited, had a bloated abdomen, and blood in his stool. He was also extremely weak and often fainted. The long-term persecution took a toll on Jiang’s health, causing the 58-year-old to pass away on April 29, 2021.
Former Pharmacist Dies After Enduring Two Decades of Arrests, Harassment and Incarceration
For upholding her faith in Falun Gong, a former Chinese medicine pharmacist was repeatedly arrested and harassed. Ms. Xu Xiaoying served one year in a labor camp and two prison terms totaling four years. Her health was irrevocably damaged from the torture in custody. She passed away on June 20, 2021, at the age of 54.
Xu was first arrested in August 2000, after being reported for distributing Falun Gong materials. She was roughly interrogated and released after 15 days of detention.
On February 22, 2002, the police arrested Xu again at her home. She was later given one year at Lanzhou City No. 1 Forced Labor Camp where she suffered brutal torture. The physical abuse she received induced a stroke. Furthermore, the guards only allowed her to receive IV drips for three days, before forcing her to work again.
Only a month after Xu was released, she was sent to a brainwashing center. When she tried to escape from the window on the second floor, she fell and hit her head, injuring her eyes. Although Xu’s family took her to the hospital, the police came soon after and forcibly took her back to the brainwashing center. By then, her face had become so swollen that she could not open her eyes. The brainwashing center director rejected her request for medical treatment, causing her eyesight to be permanently damaged from the injury. Xu would be held at the brainwashing center for two months.
The police broke into Xu’s home on April 22, 2008 and arrested her. She was later sentenced to three years in prison and served her prison term in Gansu Province Women’s Prison from June 15, 2009. To avoid further persecution, Xu lived away from home from January 2016 to August 2016, and again after she was notified for trial on February 27, 2017. The police put her on the wanted list in April 2017.
Xu was arrested on April 19, 2018, and sentenced to one year in prison. Her workplace was forced to fire her on July 10, 2019, two month after her release. The long-term persecution took a toll on Ms. Xu’s health and she passed away on June 20, 2021.
Liaoning Man Dies Five Years After Prison Release
Mr. Chen Wenduo and his wife Ms. Liu Dan were middle school teachers in Yingkou City, Liaoning Province. Both of them took up Falun Gong in April 1997. With the onset of the persecution two years later, they were subjected to multiple arrests and detention.
After the couple’s arrest on July 8, 2000, Chen was given one year of forced labor. Liu was released after 40 days of detention, after being forced to pay a 10,000-yuan fine.
Chen was arrested again on April 24, 2002 and detained for one and a half months. After his release, the couple was prohibited from teaching and transferred to other positions.
Chen’s latest arrest was on November 13, 2013. Despite his extremely high blood pressure, the detention center refused to release him. He was later sentenced to three years in prison and taken to Dalian City Prison in August 2014. The prison denied Chen medical parole and secretly put drugs into his food which they forced him to eat. As a result, he began to experience a serious heart condition.
Three months before Chen was released, an inmate gave him a cup of tea. That night, he began to suffer insomnia and cardiac arrest. The symptoms lasted for months and only began to alleviate after he was released. But he still could not fall asleep at night and could only sleep for a very short period of time in the early morning each day.
Chen began to experience heart failure in November 2020. He had difficulty breathing, had generalized edema and was unable to sleep. After struggling with the conditions for three months, he passed away on January 23, 2021. He was 52.
Based on an original report from Minghui.org:
