(Minghui.org) The Yanshan County Education Bureau in Hebei Province is targeting its current and former employees for refusing to give up their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Since November 2020, the Yanshan County Education Bureau has started to harass its teachers who practice Falun Gong and has ordered them to give up their faith. They've threatened to fire them or take them to the local brainwashing center if they didn’t comply.

The harassment is part of the “Zero-out” campaign that started in the first half of 2020 as a coordinated, nationwide effort to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith.

Ms. Han Min, a retired middle school teacher, and her husband, Mr. Cui Yindai, who also works in the education bureau, both in their 60s, have been harassed repeatedly since November 2020. Their home was also ransacked.

A staff member of the education bureau stopped her on the street in December 2020. She was arrested on the spot and taken to their office. When her husband went to the bureau to look for her, he was also arrested.

Ms. Han was transferred to a different location a day later and Mr. Cui was held in the education bureau’s office. The authorities hired people who used to practice Falun Gong but gave it up to brainwash the couple and try to make them renounce their faith.

Not until early January 2021 was the couple released. During their detention, one of their mothers in her 90s and a brother with mental disability were left at home unattended. After being abused in custody, Ms. Han’s body and hands often went into spasms following her release.

Only a few days after they returned home, the police arrested Mr. Cui again and held him in the county detention center. The detention center specially prepared two rooms for brainwashing local Falun Gong practitioners. After Mr. Cui’s 15-day administrative detention expired, he was transferred to a hospital for further persecution. The police also played video of Ms. Han suffering a spasm in attempts to shake his willpower. Mr. Cui was released a few days later.

Another middle school teacher in Yanshan County, Ms. Liu Zhixia, in her 50s, has suffered similar harassment. Staff from the education bureau began to harass her in November 2020 and then stopped her salary. She was arrested in mid-January 2021 and taken to the education bureau’s office for brainwashing. She was detained for a week and then released.