Mr. Yang Guang, 56, Jilin Province

Name: Yang Guang (??)
Gender: Male
Age: 56
Occupation: CEO of a foreign joint venture company
Date of Most Recent Arrest: November 2000
Date of Most Recent Release: Died in custody
Date of Death: August 25, 2008
Province: Jilin
City: Changchun
Most Recent Place of Detention: Jilin Second Prison

Case details:

Mr. Yang Guang, the CEO of a foreign joint venture company died in custody on August 25, 2008. Several years prior, torture had paralyzed Mr. Yang and the Jilin 610 Office had forced his wife to divorce him.

While he was sharing experiences about practicing Falun Gong with fellow practitioners in 2000, Changchun police detained Mr. Yang. He was taken to Tiexi Detention Center and severely tortured, including being shocked with electric batons, hung up and beaten, and hit with a metal rod. By 2002, torture had left him paralyzed from the waist down. In the same year, he and 13 practitioners were given in a show trial, prior to which police warned that, “if any lawyers try to represent you, they will be disbarred.”

Mr. Yang was sentenced to fifteen years and transferred to the Jilin Prison “naked area,” where paralyzed prisoners were kept and not allowed to wear underwear. Mr. Yang sat in a crude wheel chair with a large hole in the seat. Its design did not let him clean himself. 

His condition had worsened by 2004 but his family’s application for medical parole was denied.

By 2006 Mr. Yang was paralyzed in all four limbs. He suffered from pleurisy and multiple organ failure. Prison officials still denied an application for medical parole.
His condition continued to deteriorate.

By August of 2008 Mr. Yang could not eat and his emaciated body became badly swollen. He died on August 25 at the Jilin Railway Hospital, and his body was cremated immediately.

In 2000, Mr. Yang once relayed at an experience sharing conference how he had completely been relieved of his chronic, incurable ailments within a year of practicing Falun Dafa. He also got rid of bad habits he used to indulge in at political and business encounters, and finally found the meaning of life. Witnessing the tremendous changes in him, his wife and mother also started to practice Falun Gong.