NEW YORK—A 65-year-old woman from southern China is dead after three weeks of physical abuse at a brainwashing center. Police abducted her from her home in advance of the 18th Communist Party Congress, announcing that she “had some learning to do,” according to sources in China.

Ms. Jiang Meilan (???), a retired transportation company worker from Hunan Province, was taken away on September 7, 2012. Her family searched frantically for her whereabouts, but local authorities concealed her location, giving false addresses and phone numbers at least twice.

After several days, Ms. Jiang’s son located her at a brainwashing center run by the 610 Office, a Party-based security force leading the campaign against Falun Gong. He was prohibited from contacting her until October 1, by which time Ms. Jiang was in critical condition. He rushed her to an emergency room where doctors identified bruises throughout her body, bleeding, and deteriorated organ function.

Ms. Jiang died the next day.

“It is now routine for Falun Gong practitioners to be targeted for ‘re-education’ before sensitive political dates,” says Levi Browde, Executive Director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. “The viciousness with which an elderly woman was beaten to death is a sobering reminder that there remains a fundamental and systemic problem within the communist regime.”

The Hunan Province 610 Office has operated the Laodaohe Brainwashing Center in Changsha, Hunan since 2002. According to reports from China, hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners have been abused there.

Ms. Jiang, a “healthy and strong-willed woman,” according to her family, had survived at least three years of forced labor in the past for practicing Falun Gong. When five police officers came to abduct her on September 7, her husband in his seventies, along with several neighbors, attempted to dissuade the police, but they were unsuccessful.

Additional information

Xintian County 610 Office: 011-0746-4718610

Mr. He Xin, 610 Office Leader: 011-0746-4718610, 011-18907466777

Xintian County Police Department: 011- 0746-4712459 ?

Jiang Chuntie, Department Chief: 011-07464999668, 011-13607469028