(Minghui.org) Ms. Li Qing, of Heze City, Shandong Province, was twice sentenced to prison for upholding her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted in the past 22 years.
Traumatized by her imprisonment and under pressure, Ms. Li’s husband divorced her while she was serving her first term between 2001 and 2004. They later remarried, but their life was disrupted again when Ms. Li was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 6 years in prison. Her mother passed away in 2013 while she was in prison. Unable to stand the pressure, her husband divorced her a second time.
Officials Extort Money from Family
Ms. Li, 51, took up Falun Gong in 1998, one year before the Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution. She learned how to gauge her actions following the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance and stopped being hot-tempered.
When former communist regime’s head Jiang Zemin launched the persecution in July 1999, Ms. Li wrote the local government a letter, explaining to the officials why the persecution was wrong and urging them to immediately stop it. Days later, the police came and arrested her. She was later released after her family paid 100 yuan fine.
The police arrested Ms. Li again in December 2000 while she was out making copies of Falun Gong fliers. The same night she was transferred to the Shan County Detention Center. She was detained there for three weeks and released after her family paid the police 4,000 yuan.
Sentenced to Three Years in Prison
The harassment intensified in the first half of 2001. Ms. Li was first taken to a brainwashing center by her workplace and monitored the whole time. After she was released, the police ransacked her home and threatened her not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.
Despite the police threat, Ms. Li went to Beijing to protest in July 2001 with a few practitioners. After the police found out, they harassed her family in an attempt to find her. To avoid future arrests, Ms. Li moved to Leqing City in Zhejiang Province, over 700 miles away from home.
Nevertheless, she was arrested again on September 12, 2001, after being followed by the Zhejiang police while distributing informational materials about Falun Gong at the Yandang Mountain tourist site. The police beat and interrogated her, after taking her to the Leqing City Police Department.
Ms. Li was later sentenced to 3 years and transferred to the Hangzhou Women’s Prison in spring 2002. She refused to write a statement to renounce Falun Gong and was forced to work past midnight every day. After a month of constant exhaustion, she developed dizziness and vomited frequently.
She was released in 2004 and found out that her husband, who was unable to withstand the pressure from the persecution, had divorced her.
Another Six-year Prison Sentence
Ms. Li visited a practitioner on August 20, 2009, without knowing the police were secretly monitoring the practitioner. Pretending to be collecting a waste management fee, a female police officer deceived the practitioner into opening the door. A group of officers charged in and arrested all the practitioners inside. The police ransacked each practitioner’s home and confiscated their personal belongings and Falun Gong literature.
Ms. Li had one computer, five printers, two paper cutters, a stapler, several bags of copy paper, dozens of Falun Gong books and other materials confiscated.
This time, Ms. Li was sentenced to six years. As soon as she was taken to the Shandong Women’s Prison on March 10, 2010, a guard threatened to lock her in the water dungeon, “No one will notice if I killed you and threw your body out.”
The guards instigated other prisoners to make Ms. Li sleep on a hard wooden board on the ground in March 2010, when the weather was still freezing. They deprived her of sleep by having her go to bed late and wake up early every day. The prisoners frequently disrupted her sleep and removed her comforter from time to time, claiming to check if she was doing the Falun Gong exercises.
With all the torture and abuse, Ms. Li remained steadfast in her faith. Failing to “transform” her, the guards denied her right to call home every month. While she was in prison, her mother passed away in March 2013 after living in constant fear and worry. Her husband, who she had remarried, divorced her again.
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