Latest Persecution of 80-Year-Old Jiangxi Woman for Practicing Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) Ms. Chen Xiangn, 80, from Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, was detained for six and a half hours because she practices Falun Gong. After she was released, she and her family were repeatedly harassed by the police.

Ms. Chen was arrested at 12:30 p.m. on May 12, 2025, as soon as she stepped outside her apartment building. The three arresting officers from the Pengjiaqiao Police Station, including Sun Tongan, seized the Falun Gong books in her bag and said that a man reported her for giving him a flash drive which had information about Falun Gong on April 6.

The police ordered Ms. Chen to go with them. She refused and said she broke no law by practicing Falun Gong. They grabbed her arms so hard that she fell to the ground. The bruises on her arms still have not healed.

Ms. Chen kept urging the police to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners while being interrogated at the police station. At around 7 p.m., they notified her daughter to pick her up. They threatened to give her heavier punishment if she got caught distributing Falun Gong materials again.

On the afternoon of May 23, a male officer from the Yuzhang Police Station called Ms. Chen’s daughter, and asked where her mother was. He also demanded to have an in-person meeting with the younger woman to discuss how to transform her mother. She made it clear that it was impossible to stop her mother from practicing Falun Gong.

Officer Deng from the Yuzhang Police Station (phone number: [phone]) harassed Ms. Chen’s daughter on the phone on May 30. He also demanded to know where Ms. Chen was and who revealed her arrest to overseas media. Her daughter replied that he should investigate the matter himself.

Deng called Ms. Chen’s daughter again on June 3. Ms. Chen’s husband, who lives with his daughter, picked up the phone. As soon as he realized who was the caller was, he immediately hung up. Deng and another officer came around 10 a.m. that day to photograph Ms. Chen. They warned her that there were surveillance cameras everywhere if she dared to distribute Falun Gong materials again. They threatened to jeopardize her grandson’s job promotion. Before leaving, Deng even called in an urban management official to try to remove the anti-theft door. As the door was shared by Ms. Chen’s daughter and a neighbor, the neighbor refused to have the door removed.

These latest persecution episodes targeting Ms. Chen were preceded by a prior arrest because she practices Falun Gong.

Ms. Chen went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in December 1999 and was arrested. After she was escorted back to Nanchang, she was held in cell 18 of the Erqibeilu Detention Center. She and seven other practitioners did the Falun Gong exercises on December 30, 1999 and the guards shackled them together. They had to move together if one of them had to use the restroom. They couldn’t lie down to sleep and had to lean against each other at night.

The eight practitioners did the Falun Gong exercises on January 2, 2000 and were punched and kicked. After the beatings, the guards cuffed the practitioners in pairs. Ms. Chen and another practitioner had their hands and feet cuffed together. They couldn’t straighten their backs and had to rely on others to help them use the restroom. The cuffs were not removed until they were released 15 days later.