(Minghui.org) A 68-year-old woman in Tianjin was arrested on October 6, 2015, while distributing materials about the Chinese communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
The Nankai District Detention Center guards took Ms. Cai Lili to the local hospital and forced her to give blood samples many times during her detention. She recalled that she had more than 30 syringes (5-ml each) of blood drawn in a span of two months. Her cellmates commented that she looked very pale.
Ms. Cai felt extremely uncomfortable on December 30, 2015. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors couldn’t detect her blood pressure. Only then was she released on medical parole.
Ms. Cai was tried on September 21, 2016, and sentenced to two years and ten months and fined 15,000 yuan on November 1, 2017. She noticed that the prosecution evidence included two video clips of her home being searched while she was in detention, yet the footage was filled with inconsistencies. She suspects that police made the videos after ransacking her home, yet the judge convicted her based on this evidence. Below is her personal account of her ordeal.
Arrest
I went to Shuishang Park on October 6, 2015, and planned to pass out Falun Gong flyers. I only got to talk to two people when a plainclothes officer came out of nowhere and dragged me to a tourist bus. He ordered the bus driver to take me straight to Shuishang Police Station, where a police cruiser took over and sent me to Balitai Police Station.
I was kept in a small room and given no food or water.
An officer (whose badge number is 300547 and whose name I later learned was Wang Zhanli) came to have me sign a statement admitting to a crime. I refused to comply, and he grabbed my handbag, which contained my phone, keys, bus pass, and an MP3 player.
He returned hours later and brought me to the lobby. I noted a cassette tape and a jewelry box, which belonged to me, on the table and realized that the police had ransacked my home without notifying me.
Then, I saw two plainclothes officers holding my phone book and wondered what other items they’d taken from my home. I was also surprised to see my younger brother in the lobby but assumed that the police had found him and took him along to ransack my home.
Wang rummaged through my wallet and said he was looking for money to buy me some food. He never did, and my brother got me something to eat.
Wang let my brother go after giving him my bus pass, keys, and wallet. Before I finished eating, Wang took me to a heavily guarded place, which I later learned wasthe Nankai District Detention Center. I asked to see Wang again but was told to forget about my request.
Blood Samples Taken Repeatedly
I was given cabbage soup and steamed buns for meals every day. There was no bed, and I had to sleep on a big dirty mattress together with other inmates. My legs became swollen, and I almost lost the ability to take care of myself.
The guards took me to the local hospital to have my blood drawn on many occasions, but they never told me why. I remember they drew more than 30 5-ml syringes worth of blood in two months.
Guard Jia promised to release me if I wrote statements to renounce Falun Gong. I refused, as I broke no law by exercising my constitutional right to freedom of belief. She then asked another person to write for me and deceived me into signing my name and pressing my fingerprints on it. I wasn’t released right away as Jia had promised.
I suddenly felt I was going to die on the morning of December 30, 2015. The guards rushed me to the ER, but doctors failed to get a blood pressure reading. Only then did Jia and detention center director Liu notify my family to pick me up.
My son had to quit his job in another city and returned home to take care of me.
Home Ransacked When No One Was Around
I learned that my brother wasn’t present at all when police ransacked my home on the day of my arrest. I discovered that the police had taken the following items from my home: a financial contract worth 20,000 yuan, a purse with several hundred yuan in cash, some banknotes printed with Falun Gong messages, my phone book, two brand new cashmere sweaters, some wool fabric, a letter to President Xi Jinping, and the original copy of my complaints against former Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin.
Without my phone book, I lost touch with my extended family and friends.
Tried with Fabricated Evidence
I was tried at Nankai District Court on September 21, 2016. The indictment listed quite a few people as having been given Falun Gong materials by me. None of them showed up in court. I actually handed flyers to only two people, so I was positive that at least some of the tipsters were made up.
The prosecutor then presented some color photos of items that he alleged were confiscated from my home. I didn’t recognize most of the items. As for others, the pictures were too blurry to tell what they showed.
The prosecutor next played two video clips that he claimed to be footage of police searching my home. The footage showed that at least three people had entered my home, but it didn’t show any of the officers’ faces.
The video clips zoomed in on items I had never owned. Strangely, one clip showed Falun Gong flyers I was carrying in my handbag at the time of my arrest. I never had extra copies of those flyers in my home.
My closet was never shown in the videos, but the two sweaters and wool fabric I put in there were gone when I returned home.
The purse containing several hundred yuan did show up in one clip, which also showed a hand putting back the cash in there. However, the purse was empty when I was released.
The clips didn’t show police leaving my house. It was unclear whether they left at the same time or separately.
I suspect that the police shot the videos after they had ransacked my home.
The judge convicted me without ever giving me a chance to present my defense arguments. Due to my health condition, I am currently on medical parole.
I went to the police station many times to request the return of my confiscated items, to no avail. The most recent visit was on September 23, when I noticed officer Wang’s picture on the bulletin board. Only then did I find out his name.
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