Ms. Yuan Pingjun, Hebei

Name: Ms. Yuan Pingjun (???)
Gender: Female
Age: Unknown
Date of Most Recent Arrest: August 2, 2010
Date of Death: August 10, 2010
Province: Hebei
Most Recent Place of Detention: Hebei Province Legal Education Training Center 

Case details:

Ms. Yuan Pingjun (???), a seamstress in her forties, died around August 10, 2010. She had been abducted from her home on August 2. Yuan is one of many recent cases emerging from China of Falun Gong practitioners dying in custody within hours or days of being detained. Fifteen percent of the documented cases of Falun Gong deaths in 2009 involved practitioners who had died within two months of their latest detention.
 
According to sources inside China, Yuan was abducted from her home shortly after 9am on August 2, when officers from Ning’an Police Station burst into the house. They ransacked the home, confiscated her son’s computer, took Yuan’s Falun Dafa books, and extorted 550 yuan from the family. The previous day, Yuan was apparently followed home by police after visiting the relatives of Xia Junying, a Falun Gong practitioner and close friend who had been detained on July 15.   
 
After her detention, Ms. Yuan was confined to the Hebei Province Legal Education Training Center (???”????????”). “Legal Education Training Center” is a common euphemism for facilities where Falun Gong practitioners are taken for brainwashing efforts to force them to renounce their belief. Such efforts routinely involve physical violence and torture. A week and a half later, guards informed her family that Yuan had died around August 10, claiming it was due to a fall from the third floor of the building. 
 
Police forbade Yuan’s family from setting up an arrangement to mourn her death. According to acquaintances of Yuan’s, the woman was in good health before her detention. Additional investigations continue into the full details surrounding her death.