Female Falun Gong Practitioner Ms. Yang Lifan Harassed and Persecuted to Death in 2002

Ms. Yang Lifan is a Falun Dafa practitioner from Daqing who was brutally persecuted by the local police. Such harassment began in 1999 because of her belief in Falun Gong and the principles of Truth, Compassion and Forbearance. In this vicious and abusive environment, the once healthy and robust Ms. Yang's physical condition deteriorated until she was no longer even able to lie down. After enduring relentless persecution, she eventually passed away on the 23rd of July in 2002.

Yang Lifan was born in 1955. She was a warehouse manager for a construction materials company and wood factory in the Ranghu District of Daqing City. Before she started practising Falun Dafa in June 1996, she was very sick with acute nephritis and was unable to walk because of acute inflammation of the knee. After she began the practise, she recovered quickly from all of her illnesses and became healthy.

After Jiang's regime started the persecution on the 20th of July in 1999, Yang Lifan went to Beijing to peacefully and lawfully appeal for Falun Gong. She was abducted from the Daqing Railroad Station and taken to the Ranghu Road Police Station. She was released the next day. She was abducted again on the way to Beijing on the 16th of April in 2000, and was held in the Shanhaiguan Railroad Police Station, where she was interrogated for three days and two nights. She was then transferred to the Ranghu Road Police Station and, after undergoing a trial, was sent to the Dulidun Detention Centre for fifteen days. Her factory director Ren Jingyu illegally fined her 5,500 yuan. They also illegally took out 500 yuan a month from her husband's salary. Their monthly income for three people was down to just 200 yuan. From that point on, her company's Chinese Communist Party Secretary, the security director, the factory leader, and the police from the Ranghu Police Station started a campaign of harassment against Yang and her family that lasted for more than two years.

On the 18th of July in 2000, after she joined a group practise session of the Falun Gong exercises with four hundred people at Petroleum Management Bureau Square, Yang Lifan was detained at the Ranghu Road Police Station for one day and then sent to the Saqu Detention Centre. At the detention centre, thirty-five people were sitting squeezed together on the concrete floor. The room was stuffy and hot, the concrete floor was damp, and there was mold all over the bedding. She was illegally detained there for over three months. Everyday she and the other practitioners were verbally abused. The female police officers lined up twenty practitioners dressed only in their shorts and viciously beat them one by one. The police did not stop until they were worn out. After the brutal torture, Yang Lifan was dizzy, unable to stand or walk, and kept throwing up. On the 18th of September in 2000, she was released due to her frail condition.

When the National Day holiday in 2000 was approaching, the local police harassed Yang and her family daily, either at their home or on the phone. The police took Master Li's picture (the founder of Falun Gong) and the phone book and, when nobody would open the door, they took the mirror off of the door and the fuse from the electric box, which cut off the electricity. The factory director, deputy director and staff from her workplace harassed her non-stop. They also harassed her son if she refused to open the door. After two years of relentless persecution and being unable to practise the exercises or study the Falun Gong teachings, her health deteriorated until she was not even able to lie down. She passed away on the 23rd of July in 2002.