Ms. Li Yan-hua, 45, a former employee of the Feng-long Corporation affiliated to the Airplane-Manufacturing Company of Nan-chang City, Jiang-xi Province. She started to practice Falun Gong in March 1998. She was a well-known good employee and kindhearted person.

Since the Chinese government launched the crackdown on Falun Gong, Ms. Li Yan-hua had gone to Beijing twice in October of 1999 attempting to petition the regime to stop its persecutions against Falun Gong practitioners. Because of that, she got detained illegally for 10 days, and later, she was detained again for more than one month. After that, she was sentenced to 2 years of forced-labor on January 7, 2000 without a trial and was detained in the Women Drug-stopping center (also called Labor Camp) of Nan-chang City.

To protect their fundamental human rights to the freedom of beliefs and to protest the regime's brutal persecutions, Ms. Li Yan-hua and other detained practitioners started hunger strike. But the authorities of the labor camp did not paid any attention to the hunger strike. Instead, they intensified the persecutions against these practitioners. Later, the labor camp roped these practitioners and took them to the hospital. Medical examination showed that Ms. Li Yan-hua was in serious condition. Her internal organs became atrophy and damaged. The doctor could not even locate her blood vessels when trying to give her an injection. Being afraid of taking responsibilities for possible accidence, the labor camp informed the family of Ms. Li to picked her up. Ms. Li Yan-hua died at around 6pm of April 13, within 2 hours after she arrived home.

On April 16, we got the emergent news that all the 60 practitioners who are on hunger strike in that labor camp are in very dangerous situation. They could not be force-fed or given injections. They had all been sent to the hospital for emergency treatment.

[Received on April 18, 2000]