(Minghui.org) Ms. Ji Delian, 74, was unlawfully arrested when she went to her local police station to apply to have her ID card replaced on June 22, 2017. She is now being held in Geliao Detention Center in Taiyuan, facing a three-year prison term.
Ms. Ji and her family have suffered a great deal during the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China. She has been arrested and detained a number of times for appealing for her right to practice Falun Gong, and her daughter-in-law even lost her life due to constant police harassment and threats.
Ms. Ji’s Ordeal
Ms. Ji Delian, who is from Ximing Village in the Wanbailin District, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, was diagnosed with terminal cancer 20 years ago. However, her cancer miraculously disappeared after she had practiced Falun Gong for only three months.
Having witnessed Ms. Ji’s amazing recovery, her eldest daughter-in-law Ms. Zhou Laxiang also took up the practice. It was a happy time for the whole family.
Not long after, former leader of the Communist regime Jiang Zemin launched a nationwide persecution of Falun Gong out of his jealousy over the popularity of the practice.
Ms. Ji went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, but the police from her hometown brought her back. The police chief slapped her in the face repeatedly and kicked her. She was released after the police extorted 800 yuan from her family.
That was only the beginning of their misery. Ms. Ji was also detained in a brainwashing center set up in the village and sent to a forced labor camp for a year in December 2000.
She was arrested again on May 21, 2014, while handing out Falun Gong truth-clarification materials. Her four sons went to the police station to ask for her release. The Wanbailin Sub-station of Taiyuan Police Department eventually agreed to release her on bail.
A year later, on May 18, 2015, Ms. Ji was once again arrested when she went to attend the trial of a fellow practitioner in Yuci.
The next day, the Taiyuan Police Department put her under house arrest.
The police started to harass Ms. Ji and her family again on September 10, 2015, after she filed a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin for his crimes in the persecution of Falun Gong.
On November 13 that year, Wanbailin Court in Taiyuan tried Ms. Ji on false charges. Judge Li Zhiqiang said to her daughter the day before the trial, “Tell your mother to cooperate with us. Don’t think that she won’t be sentenced because she is in her 70s. The age limit is now 75!”
In court, Ms. Ji talked about how Falun Gong helped her to become a better person.
In her own defense, Ms. Ji said, “Falun Gong teaches us to be good people and to always consider others first. I was hit by a van in 2012, and the driver took me the hospital. My hips were severely dislocated and my pelvis was fractured in three places. It took more than 20 stitches to sew up the injury to my arm and more to close the cut on my left eyelid. My face was badly injured and swollen.”
She told the court that she knew in her heart that she would be fine. Four days later all the swelling and inflammation disappeared and she was discharged from the hospital on the sixth day.
“After I got home, I contacted the driver and gave him back the 8,000 yuan he left to pay my medical bills. I wouldn’t have done that if I had not practiced Falun Gong.”
The judge interrupted her and stopped her from saying any more.
Ms. Ji advised the officials in the courtroom to be respectful of Falun Dafa so that they and their families would not have any regrets.
Ms. Ji was sentenced to three years in prison, charged her with “using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement,” a groundless accusation routinely used by the courts against Falun Gong practitioners in China.
The detention center where they wanted to send Ms. Ji refused to accept her, saying that she had failed their physical exam, and she was allowed to return home.
A few days later, the police told her that she was no longer under surveillance.
Ms. Ji filed an appeal to protest her sentence with the Taiyuan Intermediate Court.
Her original sentence was upheld, and the court planned to send Ms. Ji to a detention center on May 18, 2016
At the age of 73, Ms. Ji had to leave home to avoid persecution and her name was put on the “wanted” list.
She returned home a year later, thinking everything would have blown over by then. But when she went to the local police station to apply for a new ID card, she was arrested and is now being held in Geliao Detention Center in Taiyuan City.
Eldest Daughter-In-Law Died as a Result of the Persecution
Ms. Zhou Laxiang was the wife of Ms. Ji’s eldest son. She stopped practicing Falun Gong out of fear after seeing the police beat her mother-in-law and take her to the brainwashing center in the village.
She later had a stroke and lost the ability to take care of herself.
She started to practice Falun Gong again around 2011, and two months later she had recovered enough to do household chores. Seeing her healthy appearance and rosy complexion, one could hardly imagine that she had suffered a stroke not long before. Her whole family once again witnessed the miraculous power of Falun Dafa.
When she attended the trial of a fellow practitioner in Yuci on May 18, 2015, along with her mother-in-law, the police threatened and interrogated her.
Eight days later, on May 27, Zhang Jiangang, head of the Ximing Police Station, and other officers went to harass her family. They searched her house and confiscated her Falun Gong books, Master Li’s portrait, her exercise music player, and Falun Gong literature. They intended to take Ms. Zhou away with them.
Ms. Zhou fainted, however, and the police left.
In early September 2015, Zhang Jiangang took several officers to her house again. Ms. Zhou had become very weak and could hardly walk, so they made her son carry her to the police car. At the police station, they forced her son to sign some kind of statement before they were allowed to return home.
The police harassed her family a number of times, and all this took a toll on Ms. Zhou’s deteriorating health.
Her family took her to a hospital, where she stayed for ten days. The doctors finally told her family that there was nothing more they could do for her and asked them to take her home.
In the last few days of her life, Ms. Zhou became extremely feeble. She could sit only with support and could hardly utter a word. She could not eat or drink and had become just skin and bones. She needed oxygen all the time.
Even so, Zhang Jiangang did not let up. He took about a dozen officers to Ms. Zhou’s home on the morning of October 15, 2015, to harass her again. Ms. Zhou could no longer bear it, and she passed away at 7:00 p.m. that evening, not long after the police left. She was only 54 years old.
Examples of Zhang Jiangang’s Past Crimes in Persecuting Practitioners
Zhang Jiangang is chief of the Ximing Police Station. For years he has ruthlessly persecuted Falun Gong practitioners for personal gain, earning him the nickname “Bin Laden.” A number of practitioners died as a result of his cruelty.
Mr. Hou Lijun Tortured
In the criminal complaint he filed against Jiang Zemin, Mr. Hou Lijun recounted how he was tortured by Zhang Jiangang and his subordinates. He was one of the practitioners arrested in October 2002, when the police carried out a mass arrest in Taiyuan.
“They shocked me with 180,000-volt electric batons when I was already very weak after six days on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. They stripped me and held me down on the concrete floor with three chairs on top of me. They then shocked me from head to toe with two batons, and even my genitals were not spared. My head was covered with big lumps and bleeding.
“My hands were cuffed behind my back. The electric batons made a terrible sound, and I could see blue sparks of electricity. It felt like hundreds of needles stabbing me as hammers bashed me at the same time. I felt burning pain all over.
“The torture went on for a long time—until I could no longer stand up and my mind became cloudy. The entire room was filled with a horrible smell of burned flesh.”
The Persecution of Ms. Song Cuiping and Ms. Shi Yumei
In May 2012, when Zhang Jiangang was head of the Duerping Police Station, he ordered his subordinates to arrest Ms. Song and Ms. Shi while they clarifying the truth to people.
The police grabbed Ms. Song by the hair from behind and dragged her into a police car. She was sent to a forced labor camp for three years. Ms. Shi was detained for 15 days before she was allowed to go home.
Unlawful Arrest of Ms. Li Jinlan
Ms. Li Jinlan, 65, is from Ximing Village in the Wanbailin District of Taiyuan City.
On May 27, 2015, Zhang Jiangang, accompanied by more than 20 people, including police officers and several local village leaders, went to Ms. Li’s home to question her about her attendance at the trial of a Falun Gong practitioner in Yuci a week earlier.
They searched and ransacked her home without a warrant and confiscated a number of personal belongings, including a computer, a printer, a CD writer, and printing consumables. They took Ms. Li away and fined her family 10,000 yuan. She was later sentenced to four years in prison.
Many other innocent Falun Gong practitioners have suffered at the hands of Zhang Jiangang, and he must be held accountable for his crimes.
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