30-year-old Ms. Wang Xia pictured before the persecution of Falun Gong started in China (left). After two years of torture (right), prison authorities gave her up for dead, demanding her family to take her home to die.
LOS ANGELES (FDI) -- Video footage smuggled out of Inner Mongolia shows the skeletal body of Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Wang Xia. Two years of torture have reduced her frame to 20 kilos and left her fading in and out of consciousness.

[ View video footage online: low-res | high-res ]

At one point in the video, in a rare moment when Ms. Wang is conscious enough to speak, she struggles to say: "they persecuted my body, so it has now turned into this kind of state ¡­ they persecuted me for two years."

Ms. Wang was sentenced to seven years in jail for distributing information about Falun Gong. At Inner Mongolia's Huhhot City Prison she was tied to a bed with all four limbs stretched out, hung, and shocked with electric batons.

Seeing that she was on the verge of death, the prison guards who were frustrated with her refusal to sign statements renouncing Falun Gong sought to cremate Ms. Wang alive.

According to witnesses, the head of the "610 Office" refused, saying: "Her story was published on Minghui [website]; we can't let her die in prison." Minghui is a Chinese-language website that carries daily detailed reports on the persecution of Falun Gong, often including the names and phone numbers of perpetrators. The English version of Minghui is www.clearwisdom.net.

The 610 Office head told the guards to tell Ms. Xia's family to take her home. "If she dies there we'll say she committed suicide," he reportedly said.

At home, however, not only did Ms. Wang, 30, continue living, but pictures of her emaciated body were soon also posted online, followed by the recently obtained video (see above for link).

In the video Ms. Wang is shown lying on her back as the camera zooms in on several scars above her knees left by ropes. A child, perhaps her four-year-old son, can be heard crying in the background. Ms. Wang sits up to reveal a large protrusion at the bottom of her spine, and the video footage captures Ms. Wang's weak frame tilting and collapsing to her side.

Currently, police and the local 610 Office (about) are threatening to send Ms. Wang, who still goes in and out of coma, back to detention.

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NEWS - Oct. 11, 2004
Falun Dafa Information Center, www.faluninfo.net

Background

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa (about), is a practice of meditation and exercises with teachings based on the universal principle of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance." Practiced in over 50 countries world-wide, Falun Gong has roots in traditional Chinese culture. With government estimates of as many as 100 million practicing Falun Gong, China's Communist leader Jiang Zemin outlawed the peaceful practice in July 1999 (report). Since that time, Jiang's regime has intensified its propaganda campaign to turn public opinion against the practice while imprisoning, torturing and even murdering those who practice it. The Falun Dafa Information Center has verified details of 1,064 deaths (reports / sources) since the persecution of Falun Gong in China began in 1999. In October 2001, however, Government officials inside China reported that the actual death toll was well over 1,600. Expert sources now estimate that figure to be much higher. Hundreds of thousands have been detained, with more than 100,000 being sentenced to forced labor camps, typically without trial.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT THE FALUN DAFA INFORMATION CENTER
Contacts: Gail Rachlin (+1 917-757-9780), Levi Browde (+1 914-720-0963), Erping Zhang (+1 646-533-6147), or Christina Chai (+1 917-386-5068).
Fax: 646-792-3916 Email: , Website: http://www.faluninfo.net/