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