The 61-year-old practitioner died two days after having been released in the care of her family. A co-religionist’s whereabouts remain unknown.
by Yang Feng
On August 7, 2024, human rights organizations were informed by co-religionists and relatives of Xu Shanping, a 61-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Beihai City in Guangxi Province, that she had passed away on July 7. This was just two days after being released early from the Nanning City Women’s Prison due to a severe illness she developed there. Xu was still serving her sentence for participating in Falun Gong activities when her family was asked to collect her by the authorities.
Xu and her friend Tan Zezhen, aged 76, were detained by police at 4 p.m. on December 19, 2020, for handing out Falun Gong literature near a school. Following the arrest, officers searched their homes and took them to the Beihai City Detention Center. At some stage during her detention Xu was moved to Nanning City Women’s Prison.
The status and location of Tan’s detention are still unknown. Tan’s daughter, Ms. Chen, residing in Sydney, Australia, is urgently appealing to officials for her mother’s release, whose location is presently unknown. Over the last 25 years, Tan’s household has been searched over twenty times. She has been held in labor camps twice, accumulating nearly four years of confinement, and has endured various bouts of physical hardship and psychological distress during repeated detention centers stays. Her family, which reports she has been repeatedly tortured, is now deeply concerned for her wellbeing.
As for Xu, the authorities informed her family in 2023 that she had developed cancer. The family’s request to have her released were rejected. The prison suddenly informed Xu’s family to take her home in early July 2024. She returned home on July 5, only to die two days later. She was merely skins and bones, and it was obvious that her health condition had not been adequately treated in jail. She joins a long list of Falun Gong practitioners persecuted to death in China.
