Ms. Chen Chunjun, 40, Hunan

Name: Ms. Chen Chunjun (???)
Gender: Female
Age:40
Date of Most Recent Arrest:  May 10, 2008
Date of Death: March, 2009 
Province: Hunan
City: Huaihua
Most Recent Place of Detention: Huaihua City Brainwashing Center

Case details:

Ms. Chen Chunjun (???), a former accountant at the local railroad company, was arrested on May 10, 2008 in Huaihua city by agents of the 610 Office, an extra-legal task force created in 1999 and charged with wiping out Falun Gong. (6-10 Office) She was walking to a bus stop on her way home when she was detained. Chen was one of dozens of Falun Gong practitioners arbitrarily detained that month in Hunan, as part of a crackdown by local officials ahead of the passage of the Olympic Torch relay through the province from June 1-3, 2008.

Sources inside China recently discovered that Chen died in March 2009 at Huaihua Psychiatric Hospital (a.k.a. Huaihua No. 4 People’s Hospital).

In May 2008, Chen was initially detained at Zhijiang County Detention Center, where other inmates—primarily drug offenders—beat her at the instigation of the guards, causing injuries to her head. She was subsequently transferred to Baimalong Women’s Forced Labor camp and then Huaihua City Brainwashing Center, where she was forced to undergo sessions at which authorities sought to force her to renounce her beliefs. She was then transferred to Huaihua Psychiatric hospital. It is a widely used practice for Chinese security forces to use psychiatric torture on practitioners who resist “transformation,” the psychological “reprogramming” aimed at forcing them to denounce Falun Gong.