On December 18 last year, Liu Renfang, a 52-year-old Falun Gong practitioner in southwest China's Sichuan Province, and five other followers connived to come to the Tiananmen Square in Beijing to " protect" the Falun Gong doctrines on New Year's Day.

While she was harboring in an apartment of less than 120 square meters in Yanjiao Township of Sanhe city, Hebei Province neighboring Beijing, along with 70-80 other Falun Gong followers, the woman died a sudden death. However, her Falun Gong fellow practitioners were so brutal that they neglected her death and just put her body into a smelly sewer in order to destroy the evidence.

Liu, a farmer in Pixian County of Sichuan Province, had long been suffering from headache and tracheitis. She began to practice Falun Gong in 1998, and then refused to go to hospital or take any medicine.

Instead, she instigated the other five local Falun Gong followers to come together with her to Beijing to "protect" Falun Gong doctrines and make troubles.

While hiding in the closed apartment waiting for the time to come to Beijing, Liu kept on practicing Falun Gong. As a matter of fact, the woman was seriously ill, but she believed that her master, Li Hongzhi, would help her.

On the early morning of December 31, a day before the coming of the New Year, all the practitioners in the hidden room were busy preparing to leave for Tiananmen. But her townswoman Ji Yueqiong, another Falun Gong follower, found Liu already dead when Ji tried in vain to wake her up. She told her death to those in the room, but even nobody took a look at the body, let alone show due sympathy.

On the way to Beijing, Ji Yueqiong and others were stopped and repatriated back to her hometown in Sichuan. But she kept it secret for two months until in early March when Liu's family was still looking for the missing woman. Ji felt guilty, and finally she made up her mind to tell the truth to the local police.

Some police rushed to the hidden place. But to their great surprise, there was nothing in the room.

In another development, on February 13, a farmer in the Tongzhou District of Beijing found a large plastic package floating in a river. He reported this to the local police station. Police found a woman body in the package.

In April, Beijing state security departments came across an important clue to the case when looking into an illegal gathering of several Falun Gong practitioners. Police found these practitioners had discarded a female body in Sanhe Township into the river.

In February, Zhao Guifeng, a Falun Gong follower from Changchun, Jilin Province, heard of the incident when she was promoting Falun Gong in Beijing. She instructed other practitioners to conceal the news, clean the room where the body was, and wipe out any possible evidence.

Zhao wanted to have Li Hongzhi's instructions. So she aksed other followers to try to contact with Li via the Internet. They got in touch with Zhang Yu, a Falun Gong core member now in the United States.

Two hours later, Zhang told them Li Hongzhi's instruction: do whatever you think proper. But at the same time Zhang told them time and again not to admit that the death has anything to do with Falun Gong in case police get to know about it.

On February 12, Zhao Guifeng and several other Falun Gong followers managed to get into the Sanhe apartment and took away the already rotten body, and drove it to the river and plunged it into it.

A few days later, Zhao had a call made to Zhang Yu in the United States, telling him that they had perfectly handled the incident and asking him to inform master Li Hongzhi of this.

On April 18, Liu Banglu, the dead woman's husband, came to Beijing. He recognized his wife's clothes. And the DNA test by the Ministry of Public Security also proved that the body was Liu Renfang.

(People's Daily 07/20/2001)