(Minghui.org) Two women in Wangcun Town, Pingliang City, Gansu Province, were arrested on November 18, 2019, days after they urged some Pingliang government officials to withdraw from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The officials were en route to a neighboring county to oversee the persecution of Falun Gong in early November 2019 when they passed by Wangcun Town and demanded to see Ms. Tan Xiuhua and Ms. Li Xiuzhen.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999. Both Ms. Tan and Ms. Li had been detained before for their faith and were on the government's list of Falun Gong practitioners to be targeted.
The town officials immediately found Ms. Tan and Ms. Li and brought them to see the Pingliang officials.
Ms. Tan refused to renounce Falun Gong as the officials ordered. She urged the officials to quit the CCP and stop participating in the persecution. The officials demanded an apology from Ms. Tan, who said no because she did nothing wrong. A few days later, she and Ms. Li were arrested.
More than a dozen police officers and government officials participated in the arrests. They ransacked the two practitioners’ homes and filled two vans with confiscated items.
Ms. Tan is currently held at Kongtong District Detention Center and Ms. Li is detained at Huating County Detention Center.
One government official threatened to sentence the practitioners to five to eight years in prison.
Past Persecution
Ms. Tan was a kindergarten teacher. She was arrested and given one year of forced labor in 2000 for going to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. She was tortured at the labor camp and still has scars on her body.
Ms. Li experienced quick health improvement after taking up Falun Gong. In her 70s, the once illiterate woman learned to read Falun Gong books. Because of her going to Beijing to appeal for her faith, she was arrested and detained for three months.
Ms. Li filed a criminal complaint in 2015 against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Communist Party who ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. The authorities cut off her internet connection and held her for 15 days of administrative detention. The police harassed her at home from time to time after she was released.
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