Daughter Recounts the Horror of Father’s Death in Police Custody in China

Han Yu, who now resides in New York, speaks to Faluninfo TV. (Courtesy of Faluninfo.net)

A teen daughter was horrified when she noticed a long surgical incision on her late father’s dead body. It was the first time she'd seen his body since his death one month prior while in police custody in China.

Startled by what she witnessed, she began unbuttoning her father’s shirt to track how long the incision was, which possibly extended beyond the area where the heart is located. However, right then, police officers forced her and the family out of the room, an indication to her that the reason for the incision and his death could be even more unethical than her family had ever thought possible.

Han Yu, from Beijing, China, was only 14 years old when her parents were imprisoned for their faith, leaving her and her younger brother to fend for themselves for a year.

I wondered what [my dad] had been through before he died. As I got to the second button, the police saw what I was doing, and yelled for me to stop ... I think they harvested my father’s organs for profit.

— Han Yu, originally from Beijing, China

Han Yu, who now resides in New York, told Faluninfo TV: “Our lives became very difficult. We lived on the little savings my father had left us, and ate very simple meals.”

Every day, the siblings returned home from school only to find no one around in their one-story apartment. The unattended young siblings were suddenly saddled with the responsibilities of household chores and grocery shopping while worrying over how long their limited savings would last.

Han Yu said the misfortunes forced her to “grow up all of a sudden.” Being the elder sister, she shouldered the responsibilities of taking care of her brother and cooking meals; she learned to set up the fire during the cold months so that they wouldn’t freeze.

Han Yu, who now resides in New York, speaks to Faluninfo TV. (Courtesy of Faluninfo.net)

They struggled to survive each day in the absence of their parents, who were imprisoned for their spiritual faith in Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa—an ancient mind-body cultivation system based on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, which is practiced freely in over 100 countries worldwide.

On July 20, 1999, merely seven years after the peaceful meditation was introduced in China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a brutal persecution campaign to eradicate the practice. With an estimated 70 million to 100 million Falun Gong adherents in China alone by that time, the regime perceived Falun Gong’s moral presence as a threat to its authoritarian rule and communist ideologies.

Since then, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been wrongfully detained, brainwashed, and tortured. Among them are Han Yu’s parents, who faced torture to varying degrees.

Falun Gong practitioners gathered in a park in Chengdu City, China, for morning exercises some time in the 1990s before the persecution of the meditation practice began. (Courtesy of Faluninfo.net)

In 2004, Han Yu’s father, Han Junqing, died just two months after he was incarcerated at the Fang-Shan District detention facility near Beijing.

On learning the devastating news, Han Yu was in disbelief, as her father was very healthy when she last saw him. She even thought that the news in itself might be wrong.

The police refused to allow Han Yu and her family to see Junqing’s body. The authorities even conducted an autopsy to find the cause of his death without the consent of the family; the autopsy report said that Junqing had died of a heart attack.

However, Han Yu told Faluninfo TV that there were “no official papers to verify” that her father died due to a cardiac arrest as claimed by the report.

Han Yu's father, Han Junqing. (Courtesy of Han Yu)

In June 2004, the local security department allowed Han Yu and her family to see Junqing’s body.

Han Yu said the policemen present in the room that day outnumbered the family members. The family was instructed to not carry any camera or let the media know. Additionally, they were thoroughly checked before entering the room.

Looking at her father’s body placed in an empty room, Han Yu noticed that he had lost a lot of weight; his chin and face were covered in bruises, and the area under his left eye had caved in. However, what took Han Yu aback was a long cut “stitched with thick black threads” that led downward from her father’s throat. Startled, Han Yu unbuttoned her dad’s shirt to see how big the incision was.

“I wondered what he had been through before he died,” Han Yu said. “As I got to the second button, the police saw what I was doing, and yelled for me to stop.”

The family were forced out of the room, but they continued to insist and argue with the police for a long time. Han Yu’s uncle and other relatives then went inside the room, and when the police weren’t looking, her uncle opened up Junqing’s shirt buttons, and what he saw was bone-chilling.

“They found that the incision was all the way from the throat to the abdomen,” Han Yu said. “When they pressed the abdomen, they found [it] was stuffed with hard ice.”

After relatives questioned the police about it, they said it was due to the autopsy.

“I think they harvested my father’s organs for profit,” Han Yu said.

Han Yu at a Falun Gong rally at the United Nations Plaza on Sept. 24, 2019. (Eva Fu/The Epoch Times)

In 2006, two independent Canadian investigators—David Matas, an international human rights lawyer, and David Kilgour, a former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia Pacific) and human rights advocate—published a 46-page report, accompanied by 14 appendices, showing that Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in China are being murdered for their vital organs.

However, it wasn’t until 2007, when she was browsing the internet, that Han Yu found an article online indicating the multi-billion dollar industry of forced organ theft.

“My thoughts rushed back to my father’s death,” Han Yu said. “I realized that he too was a victim of organ harvesting.

“I cried throughout the night until I passed out.”

Falun Gong adherents reenact the live organ harvesting atrocities during a march through the city center of Vienna, Austria, on Oct. 1, 2018, to protest against the importing of human organs from China to Austria. (JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images)

According to a March 2020 report (pdf) released by the China Tribunal, an independent tribunal based in London, the CCP continues to kill and sell people for organs. The document also includes hundreds of pages of witness testimonies and submissions.

The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, reaffirmed the previous conclusions that were made on June 17, 2019.

“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply,” the tribunal said.

(Courtesy of Faluninfo.net)