76-Year-Old Comatose Chinese Woman Dies After Suffering Decade of Torture

Chen Shuxian beaten because of adherence to Falun Gong

Chen Shuxian (Minghui.org)

A comatose elderly woman from China has died after suffering years of abuse at the hands of Chinese Communist Party officials, according to a report published on Feb. 23.

Chen Shuxian, 76, of Liquan County in Shaanxi Province was tortured and beaten by Chinese regime officials from 2000 to 2011, which ultimately left her paralyzed and unable to care for herself, according to Minghui.org, a clearinghouse for information about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Last year, she fell into a coma after fighting for her life “over the course of the next few years,” the site said.

The reason why, according to Minghui, is because Chen is an adherent of Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, which is a traditional Chinese self-improvement practice that consists of moral teachings combined with a sitting meditation and four slow-moving, Qigong-style exercises.

Chen Shuxian in a coma (Minghui.org)

“By the time she was released, she was paralyzed and unable to care for herself,” the website stated. “She fought for her life over the course of the next few years, only to slip into a coma last September, and died on February 1 of this year,” it added.

Since around 2000, Chen had been arrested five times for continuing to practice Falun Gong. In that period, she was sentenced twice to forced labor in 2001 and 2008, when she was around 68 years old.

Minghui elaborated on Chen’s case:

She was forced to work for more than 14 hours a day. The guards often verbally and physically abused her. They also forced her to take unknown pills or injected her with unknown drugs. As a result, her blood pressure shot up to 200. Only then did the labor camp release her on medical parole, but not before forcing her family to pay 20,000 yuan (about $3,000).

Chen had stated that after she started practicing in 1997, it restored her health. She says she suffered from a number of health issues, including migraines and high blood pressure.

Since the persecution was launched by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999, common abuses suffered by practitioners include brainwashing, severe beating, electric shock, burning, removal of fingernails, forcible injection of harmful drugs, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme weather, as well as forced labor.

A demonstration of form of torture used on Falun Gong practitioners in China (Minghui)

What’s more, researchers say that Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience have been systematically killed for their organs, effectively being used as a live organ donor bank for transplant surgeries. At least tens of thousands of practitioners are believed to have been killed for their organs, said Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, a Washington, D.C.-based medical ethics advocacy group.

The official press office for Falun Gong, Falun Dafa Information Center, has estimated that millions of Falun Gong adherents have been detained over the past 17 years.