Falun Gong take part in a rally to mark the 24th anniversary of the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China at the National Mall in Washington on July 20, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
A Chinese woman who was jailed for adherence to the spiritual practice of Falun Gong died in custody in December, in another sign that the Chinese communist regime is intensifying its persecution of the faith group.
Xu Haihong, a 56-year-old woman living in eastern China, passed away on Dec. 7, three months after her arrest for practicing Falun Gong, which the regime has sought to wipe out through torture and propaganda over the past 25 years.
The death of Ms. Xu, in a prison hospital, was confirmed earlier this week by Minghui, a website dedicated to documenting the persecution of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline that combines meditative exercises with moral teachings based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. By the end of the 1990s, the practice attracted an estimated 70 million to 100 million Chinese and won praise from state institutions and media for its health benefits and positive effects on society.
Its enormous popularity, however, was perceived as a threat by Jiang Zemin, then the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, who had long feared the Party had lost its dominance over daily life in China. Using his power as Party chief, Jiang started a nationwide campaign to eradicate Falun Gong in 1999, directing the entire nation’s security forces to carry out the persecution.
In addition to its brutality against adherents, the regime began a far-reaching campaign of propaganda, via the state-run media and education system, defaming Falun Gong and enlisting the Chinese public’s support for the persecution.
Secrecy
Over the years, Ms. Xu and numerous other adherents sought to reach out directly to Chinese officials and other citizens, to show them that Falun Gong was merely a collective of individuals who tried to live according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, not what the Party claimed it was.
When Ms. Xu talked to other Chinese about the regime’s persecution of her faith community in 2022, she was arrested by police in the eastern port city of Qingdao, according to Minghui. To protest the arbitrary detention, Ms. Xu began a hunger strike. In just two weeks, she was in a critical condition and was later released on bail, the report said.
In September 2022, Ms. Xu was again taken away by the local police from her residence in Qingdao. The police did not allow her family to visit her after her arrest.
Details of Ms. Xu’s case remain shrouded in secrecy. There was no word on the charges against Ms. Xu or the date of trial following her arrest, her family told Minghui. But in October 2023, they found out that she was sentenced to 16 months in prison. The family said they didn’t even receive a formal notice of her sentencing.
The last time they heard about Ms. Xu’s situation before her death was on Dec. 6, when she was sent to a prison hospital in the provincial capital of Jinan. At the time, Ms. Xu was seriously ill after being force-fed for a long period of time, a painful procedure often used on jailed Falun Gong practitioners on hunger strikes that involves the insertion of a tube through the person’s nostrils to his or her stomach. On Dec. 9, Ms. Xu passed away.
Intensified Persecution
Ms. Xu’s death indicates that the persecution of Falun Gong has not abated even after the death of 96-year-old former dictator Jiang, who continued to wield substantial political influence behind the scenes following his retirement a decade ago.
Since 1999, millions of practitioners have been thrown into various detention facilities across the country, where they have suffered brainwashing, electric shocks, drugging, and other forms of torture for refusing to recant their beliefs. An untold number of adherents have died as a result of forced organ harvesting in Chinese state hospitals.
Rights advocates overseas have repeatedly called upon the current Party boss, Xi Jinping, to stop the bloody persecution, especially after the death of its architect, Jiang, in December 2022.
Falun Gong practitioners take part in a candlelight vigil to commemorate the practitioners killed in China for their belief, in Washington on June 22, 2018. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)
But the momentum of the suppression campaign shows no signs of slowing. In 2023, Minghui documented more than 200 practitioner deaths, including dozens of deaths that went unreported in 2022. The actual number of deaths is likely many times higher, the website noted, considering the regime’s strict censorship of related information.
Among the verified victims was Liang Lixin, a Falun Gong practitioner who was taken away from her daughter’s residence in the northern industrial city of Changchun in March 2023. She died after a mere six days of detention.
The deceased adherents come from almost all walks of life; of their number are a middle school teacher, a nurse, and a police officer. One practitioner, Peng Xun, 30, was a host at state-owned Sichuan Radio and Television. Mr. Peng died in December 2022, a year after his arrest for his belief. At the time of death, his body was covered with bruises and scars, offering a glimpse of what he suffered in a Chinese prison notorious for brutalizing Falun Gong practitioners.
A recent report by the Falun Dafa Information Center found that the persecution of Falun Gong has intensified in the past three years and includes mass arrests, torture, and deaths due to abuses in custody. As the regime renewed the focus on national security, researchers found that the repression of Falun Gong was cited as “a top priority for the central leadership and local authorities as suggested by work reports, speeches, and directives from at least 12 provinces dated since 2017.”
As a result, the group warned that the regime may devote more resources to the persecution of Falun Gong this year.
