59-Year-Old Falun Gong Practitioner Dies After 14 Hours in Detention

59-Year-Old Falun Gong Practitioner Dies After 14 Hours in Detention
Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 30th anniversary of the spiritual discipline's introduction to the public, in New York on May 13, 2022. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
Sophia Lam
Updated:
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In the early morning of March 28, 2022, Niu Lanyun, a female Falun Gong adherent, rappelled down her rental dwelling but was soon apprehended by the police and taken away.

At about 6 a.m., a witness saw Niu climbing down a rope from the third floor, but the rope broke before she got to the ground. She fell, but stood up quickly. A witness called an ambulance, but she declined any medical care. Soon a police car came and an officer shoved her into the car and took her away.

There was a piece of freshly kneaded dough in a bowl in her room, indicating that she was preparing her breakfast before she rushed to escape via a rope. The police also took her landlord away.

Sometime past 8 p.m. that evening, her family was informed of her death and was asked to go to the Datong Funeral Home to confirm her identity. Her family received no explanation about the cause of her death. She died after a mere 14 hours in police custody.

Shocked and grieved over her death, Niu’s family demanded an explanation from the police about the circumstances of her death and for justice to be done. They called on the international community for an immediate stop to the persecution of Falun Gong that has been going on for over 20 years.

Falun Gong practitioners hold candles to honor the thousands who have died in the Chinese regime's persecution of the peaceful meditation practice. Seen from above, they form the shape of the Chinese characters for truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, the key principles of the practice. (Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)
Falun Gong practitioners hold candles to honor the thousands who have died in the Chinese regime's persecution of the peaceful meditation practice. Seen from above, they form the shape of the Chinese characters for truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, the key principles of the practice. Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times

Niu was sent to labor camps twice before, and she was badly tortured because she refused to renounce her beliefs.

Niu was born in 1963 and was a retired sales person for a local retailer in Datong City, Shanxi Province. She began to practice Falun Gong in April 1998 and soon afterward, her rheumatism disappeared, according to Minghui.org.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a traditional Chinese meditative discipline with five slow-moving exercises and moral teachings based on the core principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was banned in China in July 1999 on orders of then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin as he feared its popularity.

Millions of Falun Gong adherents have been detained in prisons, labor camps, detention centers, and brainwashing facilities across the country, where they are routinely tortured and subject to other abuses. Falun Gong followers are also the main source of organs for China’s state-sanctioned, for-profit transplant industry, an independent people’s tribunal concluded.
Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour presents a revised report about organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, as report co-author and human rights lawyer David Matas listens in the background, on Jan. 31, 2007. (The Epoch Times)
Former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour presents a revised report about organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, as report co-author and human rights lawyer David Matas listens in the background, on Jan. 31, 2007. The Epoch Times

Niu barely escaped death during the two times she was illegally kept in labor camps.

From January 2001 to January 2002, Niu was detained in Shanxi Women’s Labor Camp for her beliefs. The police deprived her of sleep and shocked her with electric batons. She refused to do the labor one day and was wrestled to the ground by a female officer with so much force that she was immediately incontinent.

She went on a hunger strike to protest the torture she received. The police and inmates beat her and force-fed her. They added toxic drugs to the liquid used in the force-feeding, which made Niu immediately feel extremely uncomfortable and that her mind would explode.

She suffered other abuses, including being locked in solitary confinement and having freezing cold water poured on her head in winter. The labor camp authorities had to ask her family to take her back home in 2002 because Niu’s health collapsed from all the torture.

In spring 2005, she was again abducted by police when she was talking with people about how Falun Gong was good and that it was persecuted by the CCP. The police locked her in Xindian Labor Camp in Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi Province. She was force-fed a concentrated salt water solution mixed with toxic drugs. She was also given intravenous injections of an unknown substance every day.

Niu Lanyun was tortured in Xiandian Labor Camp for 70 days and her body weight dropped to 77 pounds. She was sent to the doctor for examination, who said that she was dying. The labor camp notified her family to come and take her home. Thirty days later, the labor camp police teamed up with the Xinhua Street police station to kidnap Niu again. They tortured her for another 40 days before telling her family to take her home.

Niu’s family was also under constant harassment and threats by the local police. Six days after the 2021 Chinese New Year, Niu had to leave her home to keep her family from harm. She found a rental place in the same city, and lived alone there before her death.

Niu is not the only Falun Gong practitioner to die on the same day they were apprehended.

On June 18, 2020, at about 5 a.m., the Fengrun District Public Security Bureau and police station in Tangshan City, Hebei Province, kidnapped approximately 30 Falun Gong practitioners in the area, including 68-year-old Han Yuqin. Han was pronounced dead around 4 p.m. the same day, as reported by Minghui.org on June 25, 2020.
Guo Zhenxiang, an 82-year-old woman in Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province, died hours after she was arrested on Jan. 11, 2019, according to Minghui.org.
Minghui.org is a website dedicated to reporting on the Falun Gong community worldwide, with first-hand reports about the situation of Falun Gong adherents in China.
The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong has been ongoing since 1999. So far, there are over 4,700 documented cases of Falun Gong practitioners dying as a result of torture and abuse in police custody since July 1999, according to Falun Dafa Infocenter.

The actual death toll and number of imprisoned Falun Gong followers is thought to be much higher than what has been currently recorded due to the strict censorship of information by the CCP.

Li Jiesi contributed to the report.