91-Year-Old Falun Gong Adherent Released After Torture, Imprisonment in China

Falun Gong practitioners appeal next to United Nations headquarters in New York City on Sept. 20, 2023. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times

A 91-year-old from Jiangxi Province was recently released after being brutally tortured while imprisoned for six months over her spiritual beliefs

Yu Fangzhuang, a 91-year-old resident of Nanchang City in Jiangxi Province, was released on May 20 after enduring a six-month prison sentence. Despite her advanced age, Ms. Yu said she suffered brutal torture, including being shackled and scalded with boiling water solely for her belief in Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The Chinese communist regime launched a persecution campaign against the practice in 1999, fearing its growing popularity.

Ms. Yu has been an adherent of the practice since 1996. She has been victimized multiple times during the persecution campaign, including being abducted several times. Her most recent imprisonment followed her arrest on July 1, 2020, as recorded by Minghui.org, a website documenting the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. The Xihu District Court sentenced her to six months with a 2,000-yuan ($276) fine on Dec. 21, 2020. Initially allowed to serve her sentence outside of prison, the court later ordered her jailed, and she was admitted to the Jiangxi Province Women’s Prison on Nov. 14, 2023, at the age of 90.

Upon her release, Ms. Yu’s relatives and friends noted her frail appearance but were relieved to see her still energetic and alert, according to Minghui. Ms. Yu recounted the torture she endured, including being shackled for three days for refusing to renounce Falun Dafa and being forced to climb up and down to sleep on the top bunk. She often went without food, relying on whatever leftovers she could find.

Ms. Yu also described an incident in which inmates poured boiling water over her head while she was washing herself. This form of torture is part of a broader pattern of abuse used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith. The CCP’s systematic torture methods include psychiatric abuse, forced drug administration, forced medical testing, sexual assault, sleep deprivation, and organ harvesting.

The use of boiling water as a torture method is alarmingly common in CCP prisons. Numerous Falun Gong practitioners have suffered from this cruel practice, often leading to severe injury or death.

Gai Chunlin, a practitioner from Liaoning Province, died in 2005 after boiling water was poured down a tube inserted into his body, according to an account on the Minghui website. Pan Yingshun, a doctor from Hebei Province, died in 2021 after inmates poured boiling water over him, leaving him unresponsive and unable to recognize his family before his death. Similarly, Wang Fengqin, a Falun Gong practitioner from Shandong Province, died in 2003, just two days after she was abducted and the police chief tortured her by pouring boiling water over her.

Other practitioners, such as Chen Ming and Jin Jilin, have also been subjected to this torture, with boiling water poured over their heads and necks as punishment for refusing to renounce their beliefs. These incidents are part of a broader campaign to coerce practitioners into writing statements of confession and renunciation, to admit remorse for practicing Falun Gong, promise to give up Falun Gong, and never again associate with other practitioners or go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.

Li Jiesi contributed to this report.