Elderly Falun Gong Practitioner Killed in Beijing Labor Camp

NEW YORK–A 64-year-old woman has died from torture-related injuries while being held in a Beijing labor camp, the Falun Dafa Information Center has learned.

According to reports from China, Ms. Geng Jin E (???) was tortured to death at the Women’s Forced Labor Camp in Beijing’s Daxing district on June 10, 2010. Family members say they last saw Geng alive in April 2010 when visiting her at the camp. According to family members, Geng was very frail at the time, requiring two people to support her as she walked. Requests for medical parole made by her family both before and during the April visit were denied.

Geng was picked up by police on November 28, 2008 while she was talking to others about Falun Gong on a public bus. Police subsequently ransacked her home, but reportedly found no Falun Gong materials. Geng was then given a two-year term of forced labor without any judicial process.

“Torturing to death grandmother-aged women for simply speaking to fellow passengers on a bus highlights how backward and twisted the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against Falun Gong truly is,” says Falun Dafa Information Center executive director Levi Browde. “This case is all the more tragic given that Geng’s conversation involved informing fellow citizens about a topic of public interest — ongoing, horrific human rights abuses against a group of innocent Chinese citizens.”

Prior to the latest detention, Geng had previously been taken away by police in November 2002 as she was distributing leaflets to people in her neighborhood exposing the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. At the time, she was sent to the same labor camp for a three-year term, during which she was severely beaten on several occasions by camp guards. Geng nearly lost eyesight in both eyes and became emaciated from the repeated torture.

After her release in 2005, she was able to resume her Falun Gong practice and family members say her health was quickly restored.

Several attempts to secure a lawyer and sue the perpetrators responsible for Geng’s death have been unsuccessful, family members say, because the camp has refused to release any documents related to her imprisonment and the appeals office has refused to help them.