(Minghui.org) Police in Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang Province have recently intensified their efforts to stop local residents from suing former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin, who initiated the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
Since July, 128 Falun Gong practitioners and their family members have either received threatening phone calls or unexpected home visits from local police, questioning if and why they filed criminal complaints against Jiang.
Among the 128 questioned, 31 were eventually arrested in their homes. Seven other practitioners were taken into custody in other places: four were seized at post offices while trying to mail their complaints, one was arrested at work, and two were arrested when they told others about their lawsuits. This makes for a total of 135 practitioners who have suffered from police mistreatment for exercising their legal rights.
At the time of writing, 10 of the 38 arrested remain in detention.
A Recap of the Latest Police Harassment and Arrests
All of the 135 harassed or arrested have mailed their lawsuits to the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate using their real names. Some of the complaints were accepted for processing, while others have been held at various postal processing centers.
The Heilongjiang Province Ministry of Public Security developed an action plan to stop the increasing number of lawsuits against Jiang. The plan included details on how to ascertain the identities and whereabouts of plaintiffs, as well as prescribed detention terms.
According to police officers involved in the arrests, they were given a blacklist of practitioners by the Heilongjiang Public Ministry and were ordered to arrest every practitioner who had sued Jiang.
Snapshot of Practitioners Harassed/Arrested
Mr. Li Wenyi, resident of Tangyuan County in Jiamusi City, was arrested by the county's Domestic Security Division while mailing his complaint at a post office on July 1. He was taken to a detention center and held for 10 days.
Mr. Wang Lixin received a call from Ms. Zhang (a supervisor at the Hongguang District Committee) on July 15. She asked if he had written a complaint letter against Jiang.
Mr. Wang Xuechun was arrested at home by four police officers on July 28. He was taken to the Jiadong Police station and interrogated for four hours. He was charged with “disrupting the social order” and handcuffed to a bed. He was subsequently found to have high blood pressure and released in the following morning. The next day, a police officer went to his home and made his family pay 117 yuan for “medical examination fees.”
Sun Wenyi (the deputy director of Anqing Police Station) and approximately five police officers went to practitioners Hao Jiqin and Tian Jingxue's home on July 29. Neither were home at the time; however, officers took a photo of Ms. Hao's husband.
Police officers from the Qiaonan Police Station broke into Ms. Nie Fang's residence on July 30. They first arrested Ms. Nie's husband before realizing they took the wrong person. They returned to arrest Ms. Nie and released her husband.
When Ms. Nie Fang's son Mr. Zhang Yongming returned home and learned of his mother's arrest, he went to the police station to seek her release. The police officer asked if he and his mother had filed a lawsuit against Jiang. They answered yes and were promptly detained for “disrupting social order.”
That night, Mr. Zhang was taken to the Jiamusi Detention Center and detained for ten days. Ms. Nie was found to have high blood pressure and returned home in the early hours of July 31.
On July 30, Officer Xu (head of the Xinli Police Station) and another police officer went to Ms. Cheng Li's house at around 9 p.m. They told Ms. Cheng that her complaint letter was being held by Jiamusi authorities. Xu told her that they had orders to investigate all criminal complaint letters against Jiang.
Mr. Jiang Qingfeng, an employee at the railroad police department, was arrested on July 31. He was subsequently released, but his employers threatened to fire him. His family members are currently under pressure to force Mr. Jiang into giving up his belief in Falun Gong.
Background
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other members of the Politburo Standing Committee and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners over the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the communist regime established an extralegal security organization, the 610 Office, on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law permits its citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.
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