Chen FUZHAO

Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics: Poisoner - Inspired by the banned Falun Gong movement
Number of victims: 16
Date of murders: May 25 - June 27, 2003
Date of birth: 1974
Victims profile: 15 vagrant beggars and trash pickers and a female social worker of a Buddhist temple
Method of murder: Poisoning (rat poison)
Location: Cangnan County, Zhejiang Province, China
Status: Sentenced to death on December 30, 2003. Executed

China poisoner sentenced to die

BBC News

Wednesday, 31 December, 2003

A Chinese court has sentenced to death a man it said had been inspired by the banned Falun Gong movement to kill 16 people with rat poison.

The court in the eastern city of Wenzhou said that Chen Fuzhao handed out drinks laced with poison.

Fifteen of his victims were beggars, the other was a social worker who died after she drank water poisoned by Chen at a temple.

The killings took place between 25 May and 27 June this year.

According to China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, Chen was inspired by the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.

Xinhua said he committed his month-long killing spree in an effort to reach a state of "spiritual perfection".

Falun Gong claims to have millions of followers, but it was banned by China in 1999 and labelled an "evil cult".

Hundreds of its members are in jail and the movement claims that the Chinese authorities have killed and tortured several hundred followers.

The rat-poison case is the latest in a series of mass murders which have been given great prominence in the Chinese media in recent months.

Falungong Cult Murderer Sentenced to Death

Xinhua News Agency

December 31, 2003

A Falungong cult follower who poisoned and killed 15 innocent people was given death penalty by a court in east China's Zhejiang Province Tuesday afternoon.

Chen Fuzhao, an assistant clinician in a small hospital in Cangnan county, was found to have poisoned 15 vagrant beggars and trash pickers by giving them beverages mixed with rat poison from May 25 to June 27, 2003.

In the first instance judgment issued by the municipal intermediate people's court of Wenzhou, to which Cangnan county belongs, he was also found guilty of putting poison into a thermos flask containing boiled water in the kitchen of a Buddhist temple. A female worshipper drank the water, fell to ground and died.

Chen admitted the charges of poisoning the 16 innocent people to death in the trial.

According to the court verdict, Chen had started to practice Falungong cult in 1996. Under the mental control of the so-called Falungong "master" Li Hongzhi, he gradually came up with the idea of "upgrading" himself and raising his own power by massacring others with beggars and trash pickers as the target of his assaults.

Many locals watched the trial and heard the verdict.

Falun Gong Cult Followers Cruel in Killing the Innocent

China-Embassy.org

July 14, 2003

A follower of the Falun Gong cult has shocked society by poisoning 17 innocent people, most beggars or vagrants, from May 25 to June 27 this year under the Falun Gong cult doctrines, according to a commentary to be carried in People's Daily on July 15.

By now more than 1,700 innocent people have been killed by Falun Gong cult followers in practicing the cult's doctrines of "clearing crimes committed in a previous life" or "complete oneself in this life" either by killing themselves or killing others.

Chen Fuzhao, a 29-year-old dermatologist from Cangnan County of Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province, east China, was one of them.

Under his "master" Li Hongzhi's direction, Chen started killing, first dogs then human beings.

According to the heretical ideas of the Falun Gong cult, Chen believed killing could improve his own power to reach the ideal state advocated in the Falun Gong cult.

The crime once again showed that the cult still threatens society's stability and safety and the crimes once again ridicule the cult's so-called doctrines of "truth, kindness and tolerance," the commentary says.

The commentary calls on the people to remain vigilance against the Falun Gong cult and take effective measures to crack down on the illegal crimes organized by the cult to protect people's safety.

"When I was reading the doctrines on Feb. 17, I suddenly felt Master Li Hongzhi told me to do bad things, which though contrary to my usual practices, would help promote my power, " Chen said, " and I felt the bad things included killing, setting fires, and all the bad things are extremely good for our practices."

"I began killing mosquitoes, flies, then dogs and humans," Chen said.

With poisoned drinks, Chen killed 16 beggars and vagrants in streets and one Buddhist believer.

"Most people would not take my drinks, so I chose beggars and vagrants, " Chen said.

When asked how many people he wanted to kill, Chen answered he wanted to kill all human kind within one year.

Chen used to have a happy family before he was obsessed by the Falun Gong cult in 1996. "He was good-tempered and often chatted with me, but after he practiced Falun Gong, he talked little and was often seen sitting in bed murmuring with weird looks," Chen's mother said.

Falun Gong Practitioner Kills 16 People

China-Embassy.org

July 14, 2003

Chen Fuzhao, a 29-year-old "Falun Gong" practitioner, was detained for allegedly killing 16 beggars and vagrants and injuring one more by supplying them with poisoned food and water in Cangnan County of East China's Zhejiang Province, provincial police said on July 2.

Chen was taken into custody and further investigations are going on.

Chen was believed to have put a kind of rat poison, named "Dushuqiang" in Chinese, into food and drinks and then offered them to beggars and junk men on 17 occasions between May 25 and June 26 in Cangnan County's Longgang Town.

Chen told the police that it is beneficial to his "Falun Gong" beliefs to kill beggars or vagrants, whom are regarded by him as the highest-level people among all kinds of human beings.

Medical experts said that "Dushuqiang" has been found in the stomachs of Chen's victims.

Among the 17 victims, only one is still alive and is receiving emergency hospital care.

A death too far in Falun Gong's history

July 4, 2003

Chinadaily.com.cn

The appalling truth of the mysterious death of 16 beggars and rubbish collectors in Cangnan, East China's Zhejiang Province was finally uncovered by the tenacious digging by more than 500 police officers in the past week.

The accused serial killer turned out to be a Falun Gong practitioner who allegedly poisoned the victims in order to boost his own "efficacy."

Believing beggars and rubbish collectors "belong to the highest echelons" of humanity, Chen Fuzhao, confessed to killing the 16 and fatally poisoning another person between May 25 and June 26 with ratsbane. His motive, to "upgrade the efficacy" of his "Falun Gong cultivation."

As the once prominent cult fades from the public eye, the cruelty of the Cangnan killings reminds us of the damaging potential of its pernicious vestige.

As one of those who happened to witness Falun Gong's besieging of the Zhongnanhai, China's political headquarters, on April 25, 1999, I had no particular animosity against the average Falun Gong practitioner in the very beginning. Instead, eager to make sense of their outlandish lexicons, I read through the earliest works of their enshrined Master Li Hongzhi, which in itself required the utmost perseverance to complete.

The well-touted and quoted tome among the secretive Falun Gong communities was, in my secular eyes, but a juxtaposition of Buddhist sutras, rituals of rural superstition, qi gong, and undisguised self-glorification. It was more like megalomaniac sleep-talking than the inspired and sacred teachings of a saint, as Master Li is often portrayed.

The real-life stories of Falun Gong practitioners convinced us that most of them were ordinary decent people who were driven to the cult by life's frustrations.

Master Li's bragging of being able to elevate them to a "higher world," free of secular life's misfortunes, could not but be farcical for us common folk. But it somehow became spiritual candy and balm for some fellows who feel abandoned in real life.

In spite of the government-led crusade against Falun Gong, many of us had not seen the true perniciousness of the cult until people started to be killed.

When their unsolicited messages landed in our mailboxes, we did no more than simply block them, possibly even feeling sorry for denying them. When they jammed public television channels with their signals, not all of us took it seriously, thinking it was no more than a desperate stunt to get their voice across. Everyone fears loneliness. Everyone needs listeners.

When they immolated themselves into their coveted "higher world," some of us tended to accept their choice while lamenting the tragic deaths.

Even those instances where they killed their family members, we reserved some sympathy for them, thinking at least in their ludicrous fantasy they were trying to "elevate" their beloved ones to happiness.

But the homicides in Cangnan showed that Falun Gong's preaching can result in more than suicide. If the self-elevation of Falun Gong practitioners has to be conditional on the killing of innocent others, it constitutes a heinous threat to public security.

And that brooks no tolerance.

16 beggars die from poisoning in East China province

July 3, 2003

Chinadaily.com.cn

Chen was taken into custody and further investigations are going on.

Chen told the police that it is beneficial to his "Falun Gong" beliefs to kill beggars or vagrants, whom are regarded by him as the highest-level people among all kinds of human beings.

Medical experts found that "Dushuqiang" has been found in the stomachs of Chen's victims.

Among the 17 victims, only one is still alive and is receiving emergency hospital care.

About 500 policemen have been involved with the case, according to sources with the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Public Security.