Daughter Dies Three Days After Admission to Prison for Practicing Falun Gong

A 45-year-old woman jailed for practicing Falun Gong died on Nov. 8—just three days after being admitted to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison—according to Weiquanwang, a website aggregating grassroots accounts of human rights abuses in China. Minghui.org reported that her body bore signs of severe mistreatment, and authorities have refused to release the autopsy results to her parents.

Wheelchair-bound on arrival

Ms. Chen Yan (陈妍), a former employee of a state-owned enterprise in Benxi, was transferred to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison on Nov. 5, despite being unable to walk and having been repeatedly hospitalized during her 16 months of detention. Her father questioned how the prison could accept her in such a condition, but the detention center officials claimed she was “faking illness.”

On the morning of Nov. 8, the prison notified her father that she was in critical condition at Yongsen Hospital. By the time her elderly parents arrived, she was already dead.

A doctor privately revealed that Ms. Chen showed no signs of life upon arrival, contradicting guards’ shifting explanations of the timing of her death. When a coroner turned her over, black viscous fluid flowed from her mouth. Her eyes were open, her mouth agape, and her hair severely matted, her parents recounted.

Prison authorities pressured the couple to sign a consent form for immediate cremation and even demanded they send an “appreciation flag” to thank the prison for taking her to the hospital. The family refused, and Ms. Chen’s body remains at a funeral home.

Torture, trial, and blocked appeal

Ms. Chen was arrested on July 14, 2024, after a community worker filmed her distributing leaflets about Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline persecuted in China since 1999. Officers from the Hexi Police Station arrested her, ransacked her home without notifying her family, and confiscated her phone, bankbook, and cash.

Her parents—her mother recovering from cancer surgery and her 74-year-old father—found her home in disarray and sought answers, but police turned them away.

During her 16 months at the Benxi City Detention Center, Ms. Chen suffered repeated beatings, torture, medical neglect, and suspected forced drugging. Her lawyer noted a steep decline in her physical and mental state. When they met on Oct. 30, 2024, she was weak, slow to respond, and could not recall their meeting from the previous day.

On May 15, 2025, a judge from the Xihu District Court held a hearing inside her detention cell despite her objection. Ms. Chen testified that inmates had beaten her at the guards’ direction.

On June 26, the judge sentenced her to five years in prison and a 5,000-yuan fine—then withheld the verdict from her lawyer until after the appeal deadline had passed.

Although she managed to file an appeal, the Benxi City Intermediate Court upheld the original sentence on Sept. 19, 2025, after further procedural violations and despite her deteriorating health.

Autopsy withheld, questions unanswered

Ms. Chen’s parents saw her alive for the last time on Oct. 24. She was wheeled in, unable to stand, her hair unwashed for weeks. She told them she had to crawl to move around and doubted she would survive the transfer to prison.

As guards ended the meeting, she shouted, “Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness–Compassion–Forbearance is good!”

Twelve days later, she was moved to the prison. Three days after that, she was dead.

Authorities have withheld all key information, including:

• the cause of death
• the autopsy report
• the exact time of death
• the circumstances in which she was found unresponsive

Officials provided no valid contact information to the family, and no investigation has been announced.

Wider pattern of abuse

Ms. Chen had already endured persecution a decade earlier. Back in 2015, she was sentenced to three years in prison and fired from her civil servant job for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. During that incarceration, she was subjected to stretching torture, beatings, restricted restroom access, forced drug administration, and neurological damage that took years to heal.

Her case echoes those of others who survived the same prison. “In China, there are no human rights. Things have only gotten worse in recent years. The persecution hasn’t stopped since 1999—every few years, they start a new campaign,” said Ms. Liu Pintong, a survivor who arrived in the United Kingdom this July after years of international rescue. For peacefully distributing flyers about the persecution, Ms. Liu spent around eight years in Liaoning Province Women’s Prison, where she endured long forced standing, sitting on a spiked stool, humiliation, sleep deprivation, and denial of restroom and hygiene access.

Chen’s death now adds to a well-documented pattern of detention abuses, coercive “transformation,” forced drugging, and unexplained deaths that Falun Gong practitioners across China continue to face under the ongoing 26-year campaign of persecution.