Possibly Drugged, Guangdong Woman Dies Within Months of Being Arrested

A healthy woman in Foshan City began to have severe vomiting and diarrhoea just ten days after she was arrested. Her symptoms persisted for the next three months of her detention, and she suspected she had been drugged. She died just two months after her release.

Ms. Feng Juan had credited Falun Gong, a practice of mind and body based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, for returning her to health and improving her relationship with her mother-in-law back in the mid-1990s. She never wavered in her faith after the Chinese communist regime began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999. She also used various means to inform the public of the illegality of the persecution, as no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong.

She was seized on April 29, 2017, while hanging a Falun Gong banner. Her home was ransacked that night, with her Falun Gong books and informational materials, as well as other personal belongings, confiscated.

The local police station interrogated her for two days before moving her to Sanshui Brainwashing Centre, an extra-judicial facility used to detain Falun Gong practitioners.

Ms. Feng refused to renounce Falun Gong as demanded by the brainwashing centre guards. She soon began to exhibit abnormal symptoms. She kept vomiting and running to the toilet. In just a few months, she had lost a significant amount of weight.

She never recovered after she was released in early August. She told her family that the food and water given to her at the brainwashing centre was probably laced with drugs. She was diagnosed with organ failure and passed away on October 1. She was 67.