Yan Xuguang was arrested in 2015 after lodging a lawsuit against former CCP head Jiang Zemin over the violent persecution of his faith group.
A Chinese Falun Gong practitioner who was imprisoned for suing the leader of the Chinese Communist Party has died after years of abuse, shortly after being released when his health failed.
Yan Xuguang, 66, had been serving an 11-year sentence at Shenyang No. 1 Prison in Liaoning Province for suing Jiang Zemin, then CCP’s top leader, who personally gave orders in 1999 to
persecute Falun Gong across the country.
In May 2015, Yan, like hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, filed a criminal lawsuit against Jiang, holding him responsible for the persecution of his faith community. He was arrested in September 2015 and handed down this lengthy term in a closed-door trial in 2016.
On Oct. 12 this year, Yan’s family received an unexpected call from the prison, notifying them that he was critically ill. They arrived at Shenyang’s Tenth Hospital only to find Yan already unconscious, according to a Nov. 23 report on
Minghui, a platform that tracks and records the persecution of Falun Gong.
Two days later, on Oct. 14, the prison released Yan on medical parole, transferring him by ambulance to his family. He was immediately taken to Chaoyang Tuberculosis Hospital, where he died on Oct. 16, despite rescue efforts.
Yan’s mother, now in her 90s, has not been informed of his death due to fears that the devastating news of losing her son would be too much for her to bear.
Faith McDonnell, a U.S.-based human rights expert with the Institute on Religion & Democracy, an American Christian think tank, described Yan’s death as a “tragedy” and a stark example of the CCP’s persecution of faith.
“It’s an affront to everything decent that the Chinese Communist Party would release him only when he was on the verge of death,” McDonnell told The Epoch Times recently. “No one should be imprisoned for their religious beliefs.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that combines moral tenets of truth, compassion, and forbearance with five gentle meditation exercises. The practice became widely popular in the 1990s, and official estimates indicate that at least 70 million to 100 million people were practicing it by the end of the decade.
Viewing the popularity of the practice as a threat, Jiang directed all Party and state forces to eradicate Falun Gong, using any means necessary. As a result, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been incarcerated in prisons, brainwashing centers, and labor camps, where they have been subjected to
torture and maltreatment.
Arrests and Torture
Before the lengthy prison term, Yan was incarcerated twice and severely tortured while in custody.
In
2003, Yan was abducted from a local market by police. After being tortured by police at a local police station, he was taken to a labor camp in Chaoyang, where the guards deprived him of sleep and shocked him with electric batons for several consecutive days. He was on the verge of death due to the beating and torture.
In May 2015, hoping for freedom of belief, Yan
filed criminal complaints against Jiang for his persecution of their faith and violation of humanity.
In Chaoyang city, in China’s northeastern Liaoning Province, where Yan lived, the provincial police and the municipal CCP’s top leader jointly set up a task force in 2015, targeting Falun Gong practitioners in the city who had sued Jiang. On Nov. 9 of that year, more than
300 local practitioners were taken into custody in a single day. In the years that followed, at least four of them, including Yan, suffered torture that ultimately led to their deaths, according to
data collected by Minghui.
Police abducted Yan while he was riding a motorcycle on the street. They located him by tracking his cell phone and kept him in the Chaoyang Detention Center for nearly a year before the district court tried him behind closed doors on Aug. 19, 2016. The court handed down a lengthy sentence of 11 years to Yan, who was transferred to a jail notorious for brutalizing Falun Gong practitioners, Shenyang No. 1 Prison.
Minghui has
documented over two dozen brutal torture methods used on Falun Gong practitioners at the jail. Common torture methods employed include forcibly feeding Falun Gong practitioners feces and urine, subjecting them to the “tiger bench” torture, spraying chili water into their eyes, and smashing toenails with soda cans, which can easily remove a toenail. During the day, practitioners are made to sit on a hard bench with a concave middle and high sides for 16 hours. They are
denied sleep, prevented from using the toilet, forced to drink water from a toilet, scalded with boiling water, have their scabs picked with screwdrivers, burned with lighters on their ribs, and tightly restrained around the heart area with straps.
Global Lawsuits Against Jiang
The persecution was meted out under the orders of CCP leader Jiang, who was in office from 1989 to 2002. The backlash against his campaign caused him to become the first Chinese leader ever to face legal challenges, both within the country and on the international stage. Between 2003 and 2007,
15 Falun Gong practitioners in Spain filed criminal complaints against Jiang, along with four other high-ranking CCP officials. In 2009, after a two-year investigation, a Spanish court proceeded to a ground-breaking indictment on a criminal charge against Jiang and the other defendants. If they were to set foot in Spain, the court could call them before the judge for a hearing.
In Argentina, a similar
criminal case against Jiang was filed by a local practitioner at Argentina Federal Criminal Court in 2005. After four years of investigating charges of torture and genocide against the Falun Gong group, judges in 2010 asked the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to issue an arrest warrant against Jiang.
Even under the regime, calls to bring Jiang to justice continue to grow. The first lawsuit against Jiang in China could date back to
August 2000. Shortly after filing the lawsuit at a high court in China, two Falun Gong practitioners—Zhu Keming and his nephew-in-law, Wang Jie—were arrested and suffered horrendous abuse that finally led to Wang’s death. Zhu emerged from jail five years on, gaunt, hairless, and short of nine teeth.
As of December 2015, the criminal lawsuit against the regime’s former leader lodged at China’s Supreme People’s Court has surpassed
200,000, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
Call for Accountability
The momentum of the violent campaign inside China appears to show no sign of slowing, although the 96-year-old Jiang passed away in December 2022. In the 11 months of the year, Minghui confirmed at least
134 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners. In November alone, the information platform recorded
17 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners, one of whom died in 2010. Considering the regime’s strict censorship of related information, Minghui believes the actual number of deaths is likely many times higher.
McDonnell called on the United States and the international community to take stronger action against the CCP and those complicit in its human rights violations, including
forced organ harvesting.
“I pray that in the coming administration of the United States, we will be able to do more than we have done in the past, and that those who are complicit with the CCP in this country, whether they be in government or business or even hospital administrators who buy organs from forced organ harvesting, that we would we would stop those evil practices, and that we would help to bring about a change in China and in the whole region,” she said.
An independent tribunal held in London concluded in 2019 that forced organ harvesting had happened for years in China “
on a significant scale” and that killing to supply the transplant industry continues to this day. The main source of organs, the tribunal said, were Falun Gong practitioners.
McDonnell characterizes the nature of the CCP as a “terrible danger,” not only to practitioners within the country but also to those in the free world.
“The Chinese Communist Party has to be defeated.”
Dorothy Li and Li Chen contributed to this report.
