(Minghui.org) Two elderly women in Hengyang City, Hunan Province, were arrested for their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Officers from Hengdong County Police Department went to the homes of Ms. Gui Youyun, 81, and Ms. Zheng Yuliang, 79, separately on the afternoon of December 24, 2020. They pretended to be utility workers collecting electricity payment and tricked both women into opening the door. Both of them were then arrested and are now held in Hengdong County Detention Center.
Three Previous Arrests for Exposing the Persecution of Falun Gong
Prior to their latest arrests, both Ms. Zheng and Ms. Gui have been arrested together three times in the past three years for exposing the persecution of Falun Gong.
Both women were reported on the early morning of September 19, 2017, by a man who saw them distributing booklets with information about the persecution. Four officers from Baishazhou Police Station arrested them. They were confined in separate rooms at the police station and each was forced to sit on a metal chair while being interrogated.
The police took their heights and weights and photos and fingerprints. They also collected a blood sample from Ms. Zheng. When Ms. Gui firmly resisted, the police gave up trying to collecting a sample of her blood. The two were detained for five hours and released in the afternoon.
The women were arrested again at the market in Shitan Township, Hengdong County, on January 19, 2018, for talking to people about Falun Gong. They were taken to Shitan Police Station first and then to Hengdong County Police Department.
They went through the same process as the time before, including an interrogation and a physical exam. The police let them go at night. When they opened the doors to their homes, the police rushed inside and raided them. Several large bags of Falun Gong materials were confiscated.
The two practitioners were arrested together for the third time on July 19, 2019, after being reported for telling people in the market in Dapu Town, Hengdong County, about the persecution of Falun Gong. They were arrested while eating breakfast in a diner in the market. They were taken to Dapu Town Police Station.
Both women were forced to sit on metal chairs while being interrogated. The police tried to trick them into signing their case documents, but they refused to comply. When the police took them home later that day, they ransacked Ms. Zheng's place again and confiscated her Falun Gong materials.
Ms. Gui was often harassed and had her movements restricted after her release.
Ms. Gui’s Past Persecution: Forced to Live Away from Home for Seven Years
Other than the above-mentioned arrests, Ms. Gui has was also persecuted in the early years of the persecution.
Ms. Gui was 60 years old when the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. Since she benefited from practicing Falun Gong, including having her long-term illnesses healed and becoming a kinder person, she wanted to let the government and people know that Falun Gong is good.
She went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong twice. She was intercepted on the first trip in December 1999 and on the second trip in March 2000. She was detained for 35 days in Beijing after the arrest and sent back to her hometown. She was held for another 25 days at a local drug rehabilitation institution and released after her family paid 2,000 yuan in extortion.
Shortly after her release, she was detained again for two months. She held a hunger strike and her family had to pay 2,000 yuan to the police to have her released again.
When Ms. Gui attended a gathering in a practitioner's home in March 2001, police raided the place. She managed to escape but was put on the police's wanted list. She had to leave home and moved from place to place for seven years.
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