Grandmother Dies in Prison After Being Forcibly Jailed Despite Failing Health

Ms. Liu Huiju, an 84-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province, died in Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison on May 7, 2026, nine months after authorities forced her—by then wheelchair-bound and in severely poor health—to begin serving a sentence handed down more than three years earlier. Her case was reported by Minghui.org on July 23 and by Weiquanwang on July 24.

Over her nine months in custody, Ms. Liu was reportedly resuscitated four times. By her family’s final visit, she no longer recognized them. She died just weeks after her 84th birthday.

Taken by stretcher and ambulance

Ms. Liu was sentenced to one and a half years in prison and fined 1,000 yuan on November 30, 2021. Because she was too frail to appear in court, officials reportedly convened the hearing at her home and pronounced the sentence at its conclusion. Given her condition, the court did not order her to begin serving the term at that time, though authorities did not abandon their intent to imprison her.

Nearly four years later, they moved to enforce the sentence. On June 12, 2025, eight police officers went to Ms. Liu’s home and took her, in a wheelchair, to a hospital for a physical examination. When she failed to meet the standard for admission, she was returned home the same day. According to reports, officers then telephoned her repeatedly to ask whether she had recovered.

In early July 2025, police returned, strapped Ms. Liu to a stretcher, and took her to a hospital by ambulance—telling the family it was only for an examination. After the examination, and reportedly disregarding its results, they had her admitted to a detention center. She was transferred to Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison on July 31, 2025, and died there on May 7, 2026. During those nine months, she was reportedly taken to a hospital for emergency resuscitation on four occasions.

Decades of persecution

Ms. Liu was born in April 1942 and lived in Shuangyashan City’s Jianshan District. According to reports, she had long suffered from a range of chronic illnesses—including a heart condition, arthritis, appendicitis, headaches, and insomnia—that had resisted treatment for years. She began practicing Falun Gong in June 1996 and reportedly recovered her health. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched its campaign against Falun Gong in July 1999, she became a repeated target of harassment by local authorities for maintaining her belief.

Ms. Liu was arrested on May 12, 2020, and her home was searched. She was held under residential surveillance for roughly six months before being released on bail.

In August 2021, police submitted her case to the local procuratorate, which indicted her and transferred the case to the Shuangyashan City Court. According to reports, the prolonged pressure of the proceedings worsened her health, bringing on persistent high blood pressure and a recurrence of her earlier heart condition, and left her unable to travel to court—the circumstance that led officials to try her at home.

Deadly custody in China

Ms. Liu’s death reflects a documented pattern in which elderly and gravely ill Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned despite conditions that make incarceration plainly untenable. She was held at the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison, a facility with a long-documented record of abusing detained Falun Gong practitioners through forced “transformation,” physical torture, and the denial of medical care.

In the final week of July 2026 alone, Minghui.org reported the deaths of three more practitioners who had been imprisoned at the same facility and died within a few years of returning home, their health broken by the years of persecution. They were Ms. Liu Duanhui, a 71-year-old woman from the same city as Ms. Liu Huiju who was held in the same division of the prison and died on June 8, 2026; Ms. Ren Yuhong, 58, who was left emaciated by a four-year term and died on June 19, 2026; and Ms. Cong Ruimin, 68, who developed rectal cancer while detained and died in December 2025. Ms. Liu Huiju’s death, following her forced imprisonment at 83, adds to this record of lives cut short by the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners at this prison.