(Minghui.org) An 80-year-old woman in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, is facing prison for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Zhang Lingmei was first arrested on June 14, 2019, after the police spotted her distributing informational materials about Falun Gong. They ransacked her home without a search warrant. No list of confiscated items was given to her. She was given ten days of administrative detention, but it wasn’t enforced due to her physical condition.
On July 15, 2020, officers of the Panlongcheng Police Station, agents with the Wuhan Political and Legal Affairs Committee, and Xiao Yiping, the director of the residential committee, deceived Ms. Zhang into opening her door. They ransacked her home again and confiscated her Falun Gong books, photos of Falun Gong’s founder, informational booklets about Falun Gong, computer, and printer. The police didn’t give her a list of the confiscated items.
The police gave Ms. Zhang another ten days of administrative detention (to run from July 16 to 26). When officers Guo Chaogang and Huang Wei took her to the Wuhan City No.1 Lockup, the guards refused to admit her due to her advanced age.
The authorities harassed Ms. Zhang again on January 28, 2021, in the “Zero-out” campaign, a concerted effort targeting every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist.
In early March 2021, the officials ordered Ms. Zhang to attend a brainwashing session to try force her to renounce Falun Gong. She refused to comply and stayed at her son’s home for two weeks. The authorities followed her there and ransacked her son’s home.
The authorities harassed Ms. Zhang again in early April 2021. They stayed outside her home from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Because she refused to let them in, they broke in at 1 p.m. and searched her place. She was then taken to the police station, where she still refused to sign any documents. The police took her home at around 2 p.m.
On April 21, 2021, officers Sun Liming and Zeng Weiyang of the Panlongcheng Police Station ordered Ms. Zhang to pay a 1,000-yuan bail bond.
Ms. Zhang was summoned to the Xinzhou District Procuratorate to answer questions on May 7, 2022. The prosecutor said they had forwarded her case to the court and that they were seeking to get her sentenced to prison for 2.5-7 years.
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