Mental Hospital, Husband Torture School Vice-Principal to Death

Ms. Lu Hongfeng, 37, was the vice principal of the Number 1 Elementary School of Lingwu City, Ningxia Province. She was fired and had her rank taken away after she signed an open letter to the provincial assembly urging a stop to the persecution of Falun Gong in the spring of 2000. Her husband Qin Yuhuan, Chair of the Communist Party Committee at the Number 1 Construction Company in Lingwu City, beat Lu and threw her out of their home on May 6.

Homeless, Lu continued to publicly tell the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong. Her husband, further angered, forcibly abducted her on June 7 and had her bound to a bed in the inpatient department of Lingwu Mental Hospital. She was held there for more than 50 days with the collaboration of Dong Yun and Tao Zhijun, head and nurse, respectively, of the inpatient department.

Lu was medicated involuntarily with drugs that damage the central nervous system. A doctor named Yong said that Lu was forced to take 24 tablets of a medicine imported from Germany, which will cause ordinary people to lose consciousness for three days with only one tablet.

Lu was returned home in late July 2000, her health weak and precarious after such abuse in the mental hospital. Even in such a condition, her husband continued inflicting physical and mental torture upon her, including more forced medication. Lu died on September 6.

After Lu's death, Qin expressed no regret, but instead attacked Falun Gong even more viciously through newspapers and on TV. The local government broadcast propaganda about Lu's death and withheld information on her true situation.

"This is the direct responsibility of the 6-10 Office," said Falun Dafa Information Center spokesperson, Gail Rachlin. Ms. Rachlin commented that the directives from the "610 Office," the above-the-law agency charged with implementing the eradication of Falun Gong, have put tremendous pressure not only on practitioners themselves, all level of governments, and the police, but also on practitioners' relatives, colleagues and friends. "Cases like this," Ms. Rachlin continued, "with a husband turning on wife and ultimately causing her death, remind us all of the family tragedies inflicted by the Cultural Revolution. And now these tragedies are happening throughout China to innocent citizens who practice Falun Gong. It is horrifying."

Reliable sources inside China were able to obtain the above information months after Lu's death and have passed it outside of China. They wish to recognize the courage and forbearance of Lu Hongfeng, who died upholding her beliefs.

More than 1,000 practitioners of Falun Gong have been held in mental hospitals and tortured with potent drugs and other means. At least 15 of the 305 documented deaths from official mistreatment have been from abuse of psychiatric treatment.

NOTE: The Falun Dafa Information Center has compiled a special report detailing the psychiatric abuses in China. Please contact below for further details.