Chinese name:
孙瑞健
Gender:
Male
Age:
29
City:
Ningde City
Province:
Fujian
Occupation:
Date of Death:
2000-11-29
Date of Most Recent Arrest:
Most recent place of detention:
Case Description:

My husband Sun Ruijian was 29 years old and lived on Zhangwan Shang Street North #48, Ninde City, Fujian Province.  He left home on November 7th, 2000 to appeal for Falun Gong and arrived in Beijing the next day.  At midnight, he was arrested by the Beijing police while on his way to the hotel, and disappeared without a trace.  On December 1st, we received notice from the Politics and Law Commission of the Ninde City, advising us to go to the city of Nanping to bring him home.  We met with the local officials around 10pm that evening and were told that my husband had passed away.  They claimed that two Fujian police were sent to bring him back from Beijing, and that he died after jumping out of the train at 4pm on November 29th someplace between the cities of Shunchang and Xiayang.  After repeated requests from us, the police showed us a portion of their so-called evidence, which they said supported the claim that he had jumped out of the train on his own.

The next day, when we asked to see the body, the police made an outrageous request - they said that the only way for us to see the body was to sign a form agreeing to cremate him immediately.  After our refusal, they relented and said that we could see the body first, but then we would have to sign the form agreeing to cremation right away. The local officials tried to talk to me and pressure me (into going along with their plans of cremating the body right away). I began to grow more and more suspicious over the actual cause of my husband's death, and I saw a number of red flags.   The way that the authorities tried to get the family to agree to cremation right away without letting us know more about how he really died is very troubling.  Something else suspicious is that normally an autopsy would only be performed after getting the permission from the family first, but when we saw his body, a thorough autopsy had already been performed without our knowledge.  Because of these troubling signs, I cannot accept the explanation that the local police has given for the cause of Sun Ruijian's death.

Related articles:
    Chinese version available at: