Torture in custody has taken the lives of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners since the Communist Party began persecuting followers of the spiritual discipline in 1999. Of the more than 4574 documented deaths of Falun Gong adherents in China, the vast majority came from torture.

“Among the true accounts of unbelievable brutality, the immoral acts that shocked my soul the most were the lewd yet routine practice of attacking women’s genitals by 6-10 Office staff and the police.”
- Gao Zhisheng

While cases of torture are annually documented in nearly every country around the world, in China the Falun Gong represent one of the largest and most frequently tortured groups. In the reports of the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture, for instance, two thirds of the victims of torture cases listed for China were Falun Gong practitioners.

Torture has been used for decades by Chinese Communist Party police to extort confessions from suspects and targets of political campaigns. Torture is now being used against the Falun Gong group to force them to renounce their faith. Both physical and mental torture techniques are used to break Falun Gong practitioners.