(Minghui.org) A 70-year-old woman serving time for practicing Falun Gong recently suffered severe intracranial hemorrhage after being beaten by the prison guards. Ms. Chen Zhilian had a skull fracture and multiple injuries on her head. She is now being resuscitated in the police hospital. The authorities forbade her family from visiting her. More details of the abuse she has suffered remain unknown at the time of writing.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Chen, a Leshan City, Sichuan Province resident, was sentenced to 3.5 years by the Emei Court in 2018 for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong. She was transferred to the Chengdu Women’s Prison in early 2020.

Ms. Chen took up Falun Gong in 1998 when she struggled with poor health and an unhappy marriage. She credits the practice for quickly improving her health and giving her hope in life.

After the communist regime launched the persecution a year later, Ms. Chen went to Beijing to speak out for Falun Gong, only to be arrested several times and detained. The local government officials beat her and paraded her on the street to humiliate her.

In 2003, she was sentenced to six years by the Renshou Court for talking to people about Falun Gong. She was arrested again in 2015 for filing a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime who ordered the persecution.