Newly Reported in 2022: 3,488 Arrests, 3,843 Harassment Cases, 633 Sentencings, 172 Deaths
In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party continued Jiang Zemin’s order against Falun Gong to “defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.” According to Minghui.com, 172 Falun Gong adherents were reported to have lost their lives to the persecution, 633 were sentenced, 3,488 were arrested, and 3,843 were harassed by Chinese police and 610 office agents.
Since the persecution began on July 20, 1999, millions of practitioners have since been harassed, arrested, detained, imprisoned, and tortured. Due to the strict censorship of information in China, persecution reports are often delayed, and only represent a fraction of the real situation. The numbers presented here represent cases reported in 2022 and include cases not reported in years prior.
172 Deaths Reported
The deaths of 172 Falun Gong practitioners as a result of the persecution of their faith were reported in 2022, including 101 (59%) in 2022, 41 (24%) in 2021, and 30 deaths (17%) that occurred between 2007 and 2020. As of January 1, 2023, these new cases bring the total of documented Falun Gong deaths due to persecution to 4,904 since July 1999, as reported by Minghui.org. [1]
The 172 deceased practitioners were from 23 provinces and municipalities. Liaoning reported the most deaths with 32 cases, followed by 22 cases in Heilongjiang and 16 cases in Sichuan. Hebei, Hunan and Hubei registered 14, 10 and 10 deaths, respectively. The remaining 17 regions had between 1 and 8 deaths. Many of the deceased practitioners were professionals, including government employees, engineers, professors, journalists, teachers, accountant and financial managers.
The practitioners, 98 (57%) females and 74 (43%) males, aged between 39 and 89. A total of 107 (62%) practitioners were aged above 60, including 51 in their 70s and 19 in their 80s. One 88-year-old woman in Heilongjiang died hours after she was arrested. A 70-year-old man died the day after his arrest. Two practitioners, including an 83-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman, died shortly after being given toxic drugs while in custody.
A total of 26 practitioners died from torture in custody, including 17 in prisons, eight in detention centers, and one in a police station. In addition to the torture deaths, several practitioners passed away after developing serious conditions in custody and being denied medical parole for not renouncing Falun Gong. Others died after decades of repeated abuse at the hands of Chinese police and 610 office agents.
Several deceased practitioners were middle-aged men, who would have otherwise enjoyed successful careers and happy family lives, had they not succumbed to the long-term incarceration and mental distress from the persecution. They included a man who died one year after serving 19 years for tapping into the TV signal to broadcast programs that debunked the Chinese Communist Party’s hate propaganda against Falun Gong, and a math tutor who never regained consciousness after being sentenced to two years when he was still in a coma.
The persecution also caused many families to fall apart, after several married couples died one after another, as well as the passing of two parents and their son.
The full list of the 172 deceased practitioners can be downloaded here (PDF).
Featured Case: Ms. Ji Yunzhi, 66, Died after Abuse in Detention
Ms. Ji Yunzhi, a resident of Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, and mother of Simon Zhang, a U.S. resident, died at Bairin Hospital on March 21, 2022, seven weeks after she was arrested on Chinese New Year’s Day (February 1). She was 66.
While in detention, she was brutally beaten by guards and inmates until she was on the verge of death. “If I die, it will be the result of torture,” Ms. Ji once said to her cellmates.
Ms. Ji went on a hunger strike at the Bairin Left Banner Detention Center and was force-fed through a nasal tube. The detention center doctor slapped her in the face many times.
On the morning of March 20, 2022, Ms. Ji’s husband received a call from the Bairin police notifying him to go to the hospital. Upon arriving there, he was told that doctors had started to resuscitate Ms. Ji, but the prognosis was not good. A plan was made to transfer her from Bairin Hospital to Chifeng City Hospital. But an expert from the city hospital, who had come to Bairin to examine Ms. Ji, said it was too late and there was no need to transfer her. Her husband repeatedly requested her release, but the officer in charge refused to do so, saying he needed approval from his superiors.
The family was notified of Ms. Ji’s death the next day. They asked to see her one last time in the hospital room, but the police stopped them. Through the window, her family saw that her esophagus had been cut open. There was also blood on her face and shoulder. Many police officers were standing in the hallway. They drove Ms. Ji’s family from that level of the building and closed the elevator to that level so that no one could access the area.
After her family left that floor, the police called the Bairin Crematorium, which soon dispatched a vehicle to pick up Ms. Ji’s body for storage. When Ms. Ji’s family arrived at the crematorium, the forensic investigator did not allow them in. They begged the police and were eventually allowed to go in one at a time and take a quick look at her body.
633 Sentencings Reported
According to reports and statistics from Minghui.org, Chinese courts sentenced 633 Falun Gong practitioners in 2022. 59% of sentences were longer than 3 years. The cases were distributed across 28 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. [2]
Niu Xiaona, a disabled woman from Harbin, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Chu Jidong from Tianjin City was sentenced to 13 years in prison, and Wu Chengshou from Weifang City, Shandong Province was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined 100,000 yuan (~15,000 USD).
The areas with the most arrests were Shandong Province with 107 arrests, Liaoning Province with 83 arrests, Guangdong Province with 59 arrests, Beijing City with 43 arrests, and Jilin Province with 39 arrests.
The court fined Falun Gong adherents over 3,300,000 yuan (~480,000 USD). Zhao Tianhua from Huizhou City, Guangdong Province was illegally sentenced to seven years and fined of 500,000 yuan (~73,000 USD).
The full list of sentenced practitioners can be downloaded here.
Featured Case: Mother of Canadian Resident and Former English Professor Sentenced to 3.5-Year Prison Term
Ms. Liu Yan, a former English professor in Yunnan Province and also mother of a Toronto resident, was sentenced in April 2022 to three and a half years for practicing Falun Gong.
Ms. Liu was an associate professor and former director of the Foreign Language Department of Yunnan University of Arts and Sciences. While taking a taxi on September 29, 2021, the driver, surnamed Luo, made unwanted advances toward her. Ms. Liu rejected him and told Luo that she practiced Falun Gong and lived by Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. In retaliation, Luo reported Ms. Liu to the police.
A dozen officers, including Ding Jianfeng and Guo Hongwei of the Wuhua District Domestic Security Office, arrested Ms. Liu the next day, while she was working at the environmental protection art museum that she and her husband operated. She was held in the Kunming City Detention Center and denied visitation from her lawyer and family.
The Wuhua District Court sentenced Ms. Liu to three and a half years in prison and fined her 5,000 yuan (~400 USD) in April 2022 following a hearing on February 25. She was charged with Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code, “undermining law enforcement with a xie jiao organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners. She is in the process of appealing the verdict.
Ms. Liu’s daughter, Ms. Liu Mingyuan, who is pursuing a computer animation degree at Sheridan College in Toronto, has held press conferences since last October and written letters to government officials calling for the immediate release of her mother.
7,331 Harassment Cases and Arrests Reported
According to statistics reported on Minghui.com, 7,331 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested or harassed (3,488 arrested and 3,843 harassed) in 2022. Among them, 2,193 people had their homes ransacked, 240 people were forcibly sent to brainwashing centers, 78 people were forced to run away from home, and 128 people were forced to have their biometric data collected (drawing blood, collecting hair, recording voice prints, fingerprints and footprints, taking saliva, urine testing, etc.). [3]
In 2022, the CCP extorted or stole over 3,000,000 yuan (~440,000 USD) from Falun Gong practitioners, and 82 people had their pensions withheld.
The detainments and harassment cases were distributed across 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities across China. The regions with the most arrests were Shandong with 507, Heilongjiang with 477, Hebei with 357, Jilin with 298, and Liaoning with 284.
The regions with the most harassment cases include 655 in Hebei, 555 in Shandong, 519 in Sichuan, 380 in Heilongjiang, and 329 in Jilin. The most brainwashing cases were reported in Hubei with 76 cases, Sichuan with 40 cases, and Shandong with 33 cases.
Featured Case: Mother and Wife of Australian Residents Sexually Assaulted via “Torture Kit”
A former lecturer at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Ms. Jiang Yongqin, was held in a secret detention facility and sexually assaulted by a torture expert from the Jilin Province Public Security Bureau.
During the process, a “trained expert” and his assistant from the Special Disciplinary Office (SDO) applied the torture kit to sexually abuse Jiang until she collapsed. The SDO is a new secret agency under the Jilin Province Public Security Bureau, created to persecute and “re-educate” Falun Gong practitioners. The SDO expert told her, “There are certain restrictions on using the kit; but, when it comes to Falun Gong, we use it whenever we like.”
Jiang’s family in Australia has since called for her release in front of the Chinese Consulate in Melbourne on August 15, 2022. Her two daughters and husband currently live in Melbourne.
Read more about the five key trends in 2022 regarding the persecution of Falun Gong
