(Minghui.org) A resident of Yinchuan City in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region was arrested on June 5, 2020, for practicing Falun Gong while visiting his relatives in Guyuan City in the same province about 200 miles away.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient mind-body improvement discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Ma Zhiwu, 50, held a hunger strike at Guyuan City Detention Center to protest the persecution and was sent to the hospital for force-feedings. His family repeatedly went to the police station and detention center to demand his release, but to no avail.
The local procuratorate recently approved his arrest and he is now facing indictment for his faith.
Mr. Ma was a railroad crew driver. He took up Falun Gong in May 1998. After the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution of his faith in 1999, he has been repeatedly arrested and held in detention for 12 years.
Mr. Ma was first given three years of forced labor, shortly after he was arrested in September 1999 for appealing for Falun Gong. Because he went on a hunger strike to protest the illegal detention, the local court sentenced him to six years in prison at the two-year mark of his labor camp incarceration.
The prison guards once tied him to a “death bed,” with his four limbs stretched tightly in a spread eagle position for more than 40 days. He was also force fed with unknown drugs with dead flies in it. He felt his body was burning inside afterwards, and he was unable to stand or walk for six months.
Mr. Ma’s wife was pregnant with their daughter when he was first arrested in 1999. The little girl grew up without her father around. She was taken into police custody on November 20, 2001, when she was two years old, as the police tried to use her to force her mother to renounce Falun Gong.
When Mr. Ma was released in February 2008, his daughter was already 8 years old. But only two years later, Mr. Ma was arrested again on September 12, 2010 and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. He suffered brutal torture, including beatings, sitting on small stool for long hours every day for 1.5 years, sexual assault, and freezing. His left kidney was injured. His rib was broken. He had blood in his urine. His legs were severely swollen and bruised, and he was unable to stand.
During the time of his incarceration, his father passed away in 2010 due to the mental distress of worrying about him.
The authorities have been constantly harassing Mr. Ma since he was released on March 12, 2014. Just before the anniversaries of a historic appeal of Falun Gong practitioners on April 25 and the public introduction of Falun Gong on May 13 this year, the police and the residential committee staff members harassed Mr. Ma at home.
Related reports:
Ningxia Man Sues Jiang Zemin for 12 Years of Wrongful Detention
After Eight Years of Imprisonment, Mr. Ma Zhiwu Sentenced Again to Three and a Half Years
Wuzhong City Intermediate Court Secretly Tries Mr. Ma Zhiwu a Second Time
After Being Tortured in Prison for Eight Years, Mr. Ma Zhiwu Is Facing Another Illegal Trial
Mr. Ma Zhiwu, Tortured for Years in Detention, Has Been Arrested Again
Detained for Eight Years, Mr. Ma Zhiwu Arrested Again
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