To force Falun Gong practitioners to “transform” -- that is, to abandon their practice -- the CCP has employed more than a hundred forms of torture, among which one especially brutal method is violent force-feeding.
Imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners, subjected to all manner of torture, have gone on hunger strikes to resist the persecution and to uphold their faith in Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, refusing to “transform.” In the process they have endured immense physical and psychological suffering, and some have even lost their lives.
Force-feeding was originally a medical technique used in hospitals for patients unable to eat normally or with swallowing difficulties, delivering liquid food or nutritional formula into the stomach through a tube. Proper force-feeding requires specialized medical knowledge and careful precautions to avoid danger.
Yet the CCP has taken this life-saving method -- originally meant to help patients with eating problems -- and turned it into a torture tactic used against Falun Gong practitioners, even treating it as a “highly effective” method of torture to be used widely.
The process of force-feeding is brutal and terrifying: tubes are inserted so violently that they puncture the esophagus or stomach, or are deliberately or mistakenly pushed into the trachea or lungs, leaving victims struggling to breathe and in mortal danger; tubes are pushed through the nose into the stomach and repeatedly twisted and churned, left in place from morning until night, leaving victims gasping for breath and in unbearable pain; instead of nutritional fluid, what is poured in is concentrated brine, chili water, or worse, sometimes even laced with poison, burning and cramping the stomach until it ulcerates and rots...
Falun Gong practitioners subjected to force-feeding have suffered horrifically. They are bound so they cannot move, or held down by several people at once; their mouths are pried open until they bleed, or their noses are pinched shut to force their mouths open, or a mouth gag is used to force the jaw open while teeth are pried loose. They retch, vomit, and cough violently, suffering beyond description, living a fate worse than death -- some have been suffocated or tortured to death.
The following cases are merely the tip of the iceberg, but they give a glimpse of just how brutal this torture can be.
Teeth Pried Out, One Falls Into Her Lung During Force-Feeding, Life in Danger
Yang Shuzhen, a Falun Gong practitioner in her fifties from Jingyu County, Baishan City, Jilin Province, was abducted by domestic security police in July 2024 and later illegally sentenced to four years in prison. She was taken to the “breakthrough unit” in the eighth division of Jilin Women's Prison, where she suffered various forms of torture, including brutal force-feeding.
Yang went on a hunger strike to resist the persecution, and police responded with violent force-feeding. On one occasion, her teeth were pried loose during the process, and one tooth ended up lodged in her lung during a subsequent forced feeding, leaving her struggling to breathe and in critical condition; she was rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. To remove the tooth, doctors had to remove part of her lung.
After her teeth were pried out, she could no longer eat normally. To enable her to eat, police only had a single replacement tooth fitted for her.
A Tube Deliberately Pushed Into the Trachea, Food Laced With Poison
Gao Ke, a retired teacher from Daowai District, Harbin, and a Falun Gong practitioner, was abducted in 2023 and illegally sentenced to four and a half years in prison. He was tortured at Tailai Prison in Qiqihar, and the persecution left him severely mentally disturbed and his health rapidly deteriorating; he died from the persecution around April 20 this year, at about age 72.
He had been illegally detained sixteen times, sent to forced labor camps five times, and given a formal prison sentence once.
In 2001 he was sent to Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp, where he went on hunger strike for 83 days and was subjected to violent force-feeding, mostly with concentrated brine mixed with a little cornmeal. A doctor at the labor camp repeatedly and deliberately pushed the feeding tube into his trachea, bringing him to the brink of death several times.
On the night of February 7, 2002, he was abducted from his home by officers from the First Division and the Internal Security Section of the Daowai Branch of the Harbin Public Security Bureau, and taken to the No. 2 Harbin Detention Center. He went on hunger strike in protest and was violently force-fed, his stomach punctured and bleeding.
In late February 2006, Gao Ke was abducted while telling people the truth about Falun Gong on the street, and taken to the No. 1 Harbin Detention Center.
Five days into his hunger-strike protest, inmates held him down and handcuffed his hands to an iron chair. A doctor surnamed Wang deliberately inserted a thick tube into his trachea and left it there for a long time, causing him unbearable pain. Afterward, Wang told him: “I'm a surgeon, I know how to force-feed people. I inserted it into your trachea on purpose that time.”
In 2009 he was sent back to the same labor camp and placed in a small isolation cell, chained to a floor ring for sixteen days and nights. He went on hunger strike in protest and was violently force-fed, with unidentified drugs mixed into the food, causing severe chest pain; he was sent to the hospital for examination and diagnosed with grade-two heart failure, with blood pressure over 200.
Doctors Often Push the Tube All the Way to the Bottom of the Stomach and Twist It Up and Down
Liu Ruping, a 65-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Changqing District, Jinan, was abducted along with his wife on the morning of September 29, 2025, and later illegally sentenced to three and a half years in prison -- the third time he had been wrongfully sentenced.
Liu Ruping graduated in July 1982 from the Department of Agricultural Economics and Management at Shandong Agricultural University, and in October 1993 passed the national bar examination and was licensed as a lawyer. He later served as director of the legal research office at the Changqing District Party School, while also working as a full-time lawyer at Shuntian Law Firm.
On January 22, 2010, the Changqing District Court illegally sentenced him to a heavy term of seven years, and he was sent to Shandong Provincial Prison.
In May 2012, Liu Ruping went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution and demanded to be allowed to read Falun Gong's books and practice the exercises, but was instead subjected to more than twenty consecutive days of brutal force-feeding by tube. Li Weiwei, head of the eleventh division, threatened him: “Do you want to die, or do you want to live?”
While in group twenty, he was punched and kicked by criminal inmate Zhao Yuekui, his ear and cheekbone swelling instantly, leaving him with headaches and dizziness. For a full 21 days afterward, he was forcibly tube-fed six times a day.
Each time he was force-fed, police strapped his feet, legs, waist, chest, and arms entirely to a wooden chair with restraints. The doctor inserting the tube would often push it all the way to the bottom of his stomach, then twist it up and down repeatedly, causing him unbearable agony. Police, finding this method of torture “highly effective,” used it widely throughout the prison, at times force-feeding multiple Falun Gong practitioners together in the corridor.
Tubes Often Mistakenly Inserted Into the Trachea or Lungs, Causing Lung Infections
Li Xianghong, a 63-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Urumqi, has been persecuted by the CCP repeatedly over more than two decades: forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital, illegally sentenced to prison twice for a combined 14 years, fired from her public-sector job, and stripped of her pension.
In August 2000, Li Xianghong was arrested for distributing Falun Gong informational materials and held at the Liudaowan Detention Center in Xinjiang. In March 2001, to resist the persecution, she began a hunger and water strike. Prison guards subjected her to violent force-feeding, ramming a thick tube down through her nasal passage into her esophagus, frequently pushing it mistakenly into her trachea or lungs, causing a lung infection, a high fever that would not subside, and putting her life in danger.
In 2001, she continued her hunger strike this way for more than forty days. In April, a judge from an intermediate court came to her cell and announced she would be granted “supervised release for three years outside prison.” The judge also asked her whether, once released, she could guarantee she would “not practice, not spread the teachings, and not do anything related to Falun Gong.” She said: “I cannot.”
A Tube Up Her Nose From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Her Esophagus Punctured
Jiang Lanying, a Falun Gong practitioner from Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, died of her unjust suffering at around 8 a.m. on April 22, 2026, after more than fifteen years of brutal persecution by the CCP; she was 60 years old.
In total she endured 15 years and 2 months of illegal forced labor and wrongful imprisonment, more than three of those years spent on hunger strike, and she never once agreed to “transform.”
In January 2000, Jiang Lanying was taken to Jiangxi Women's Forced Labor Camp; because she refused to “transform,” she still had not been released two years later, and was instead taken to an armed-police brainwashing class for further persecution. She went on hunger strike in protest and was violently force-fed, a rubber tube shoved up her nose and left in place from eight in the morning until ten at night; she could barely breathe, and her esophagus was punctured and bleeding.
At one in the morning on July 11, 2002, she was taken from her home by police and held at a detention center, later illegally sentenced to five years. She was sent to Jiangxi Province's labor-reform hospital, where she suffered brutal torture and was violently force-fed for two years and eleven months straight, her weight dropping from over 130 jin (roughly 65 kg) to just over 30 jin (roughly 15 kg).
The long-term violent force-feeding left her with stomach ulcers and internal rot, her life repeatedly hanging by a thread; despite repeated attempts to save her, she ultimately died of her unjust suffering.