Here’s a passage from an article about the torture and death of a woman named Chen Yan, who in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party was a multiple offender for accepting and promulgating the doctrines of Falun Gong: “The lawyer was unable to see her until on Sept. 18 because she had been admitted to a hospital, according to the report. During the first visit, the lawyer saw that Chen was in a wheelchair and could barely hold herself up. The next day, the appeals court upheld Chen’s sentence” (The Epoch Times, November 23, 2025).
The Benxi City Intermediate Court upheld the sentence. Is this not consistent with due process and the rule of law?
A process
If one has a problem with how a government is doing something and can implore a court to rectify the matter, we have here a process. As part of the process, the court deliberates (let us pretend) and issues a ruling.
We mustn’t yet refer to this as “due” process, as this aspect would have to be shown by the nature of the process. We must know whether the process is good and just and practical; not necessarily a perfect institutional mechanism, but one embodying a reasonable attempt to adhere to applicable guidelines suggested by the desire to be good and just and practical. And we must know whether the process is standard in the society that we are talking about or rare and anomalous.
The court’s ratification of what was happening to Chen Yan is not rare or anomalous. It is standard. What the courts of the People’s Republic of China do in such cases is a foregone conclusion. In such cases, as opposed perhaps to certain litigation or other judicial proceedings that do not touch on the interests and conduct of the CCP, the courts of the PRC are pointless. But they are part of a process.
Some of the other elements of the process, as reported by “a Minghui correspondent in Liaoning Province, China” (November 20, 2025):
A 45-year-old woman in Benxi City, Liaoning Province, died on November 8, 2025, three days after she was admitted to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison to serve a five-year term for her faith in Falun Gong….
Ms. Chen was arrested on July 14, 2024, and was tried in the Xihu District Court on May 15, 2025. She was sentenced to five years with a 5,000-yuan fine on June 26….
Ms. Chen’s appeal was denied by the Benxi City Intermediate Court on September 19, 2025, and she was admitted to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison on November 5. She had previously served a three-year term in the same prison (2015 to 2018) and [been] forced to take unknown drugs that damaged her central nervous system….
Ms. Chen was brutally tortured while being held in the Benxi City Detention Center following her latest arrest…
The lawyer returned to the detention center on September 18 and saw that Ms. Chen had to be wheeled out to the meeting room. Her legs shook, and she said she could barely walk and was often starved….
Ms. Chen had one last visit with her parents on October 24. Two female guards moved her from the wheelchair to a chair. Her hair was still matted because it had not been shampooed in a long time. She was unable to take care of herself and no one helped her. She said that she was very weak and had to lean against the wall to use the restroom. She had to crawl to get around. She doubted if she’d return home alive.
When asked why she refused to have an evaluation, Ms. Chen explained to her parents that she suspected the evaluation questions might require her to defame Falun Gong….
Early on November 8, Ms. Chen’s father received a call from guard Wang at Division 12 and was told to hurry to Yongsen Hospital because his daughter was in critical condition.
By the time her parents got the hospital, she was already dead.
An acquaintance of mine, a successful investor who regularly visits China, told me recently that he thinks that indictments of the Chinese Communist Party tend to be overblown. All states, after all, violate individual rights to one extent or another. This is true enough. All states repress to some extent—if there be an exception, it is not well-advertised—and some states are worse than others.
Also true: Mao is dead and the PRC is not at present characterized by the same ubiquity of mass slaughter that often marked the rule of Mao. These days, murders by the Chinese Communist Party are more targeted and less openly committed.
I suspect, though, that our regular visitor of the People’s Republic of China is not as well-informed as he might be about what the party-state is doing in places that he does not see during his trips.
Also see:
Mingui: “Falun Gong Practitioners Killed in Persecution: 5,265 Confirmed Dead”
“The true death toll is higher, but due to strict censorship in China, many cases remain unreported or require further investigation.”
StoptheCCP.org: Resources
