Ms. Wang Chunxiang, 55, Liaoning

Name: Wang Chunxiang (???)
Gender: Female
Age: 55
Date of Most Recent Arrest: October 31, 2006
Date of Most Recent Release: Died in custody
Date of Death: September 25, 2011
City: Dandong
Province: Liaoning
Most Recent Place of Detention: Liaoning Province Women’s Prison (???????)

Case details:

Ms. Wang Chunxiang was abducted in October 2006 after a plainclothes police officer followed her home and then found Falun Gong related materials and a printer in her home, after he entered and searched it without a warrant. Soon after, she was sentenced in a sham trial to eight years in a prison camp and was sent to Liaoning Province Women’s Prison.

Over the next five years, her health deteriorated badly due to torture and being denied medical attention. On September 25, 2011, prison authorities alerted her family members that she had died.

When Ms. Wang’s family arrived at the prison, they saw her body was emaciated, though no bruise marks were visible. The prison authorities claimed she had died of a heart attack, but refused to produce copies of the hospital records that would confirm their account. They pressured the family to quickly approve her cremation, which they eventually did.

According to sources inside China, during the winter of 2007, a prison guard instigated two inmates to beat Ms. Wang, including in her genitals, when she refused to renounce her faith in Falun Gong and its core teaching of following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. She was also locked in an ice cold warehouse. After this torture session, illnesses she had previously recovered from by practicing Falun Gong, namely diabetes and high blood pressure, recurred.

Despite her deteriorating health and initial approval from certain authorities for her release on medical parole, the prison authorities refused to allow her to return home with her family in 2010 because she had refused to “transform.”