Falun Gong Practitioner Dies from Psychiatric Torture in Southeast China
New York—A 40-year-old female Falun Gong practitioner in Hunan province has died in custody, apparently due to psychiatric torture, the Falun Dafa Information Center recently learned. The woman had been detained in May 2008 in a local crackdown before the Olympic Torch passed through the province.
Ms. Chen Chunjun (陈楚君), a former accountant at the local railroad company, was arrested on May 10, 2008 in Huaihua city by agents of the 610 Office, an extra-legal task force created in 1999 and charged with wiping out Falun Gong. (6-10 Office) She was walking to a bus stop on her way home when she was detained. Chen was one of dozens of Falun Gong practitioners arbitrarily detained that month in Hunan, as part of a crackdown by local officials ahead of the passage of the Olympic Torch relay through the province from June 1-3, 2008.
Sources inside China recently discovered that Chen died in March 2009 at Huaihua Psychiatric Hospital (a.k.a. Huaihua No. 4 People’s Hospital).