A Practitioner

One morning in the winter of 2000, the police brought the body of a young man who had been tortured to death to the emergency ward of the Mentougou Hospital. The young man looked as if he was approximately twenty years old. When the doctors asked the police about the young man's name and his home address, the police said, "He doesn't have a name; he is a Falun Gong practitioner."

When the doctors were examining the young man's body, they found that it was covered with injuries. His ears and face had been frozen, and bloody pus came out from the wounds there. Several of his ribs were broken. The thighbones of both his legs had been fractured. His two hands had been seriously injured, with the bones of his fingertips exposed. Many older injuries that had not healed at the time of his death were also apparent on the body.

After the doctors had examined the young man's body, the police quickly took it to the morgue. Later, police from the Public Security Bureau came back to the hospital to ask for a death certificate that stipulated that the young practitioner had died suddenly of a heart attack. When the doctors firmly refused to write this false death certificate, the police went to the head of the hospital and sealed all records containing information related to the practitioner's death. It is unknown what the hospital wrote as the cause of death on this young Falun Gong practitioner's death certificate.