(Minghui.org) A 65-year-old Kunming City, Yunnan Province resident has been detained for nearly a month for practicing Falun Gong, a mind-body discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Someone knocked on the door of Mr. Ran Chunhui, a retired manager of a railroad construction company, on May 30, 2022, claiming to be from the property management. His wife, Ms. Hu Qiongfen, a 62-year-old retired employee of the Yunnan Province Railroad Bureau, opened the door, only to have eight officers barge in. The person from the property management then left.
One officer standing in the front held up a piece of paper, without letting the couple read what was on it.
Another officer then showed Ms. Hu a photo of a person wearing a black down jacket walking on the street. He claimed that it was Mr. Ran in the photo and that they had been monitoring him for the past two months, after he was recorded distributing Falun Gong informational materials on April 5.
The officers spent over two hours searching the couple’s home, without showing their IDs or revealing where they came from. The couple’s Falun Gong books, a photo of Falun Gong’s founder, Falun Gong lecture audiotapes, and DVDs, as well as their laptop and cellphones were all taken away. The police later returned Ms. Hu’s phone, but not Mr. Ran’s. No confiscation list was provided.
The couple was then taken to the Xiaobanqiao Police Station in cars with private plates. Ms. Hu was chained in a metal chair and interrogated. The officers asked her when she started to practice Falun Gong, whether she did it to improve her health, what time she usually did the exercises, where she learned it, where she got the Falun Gong books, as well as whether she had contact with other practitioners and who they were. They also asked about Mr. Ran’s daily activities, his previous prison sentence given in 2013 for practicing Falun Gong, and whether their son practiced it. It’s not clear whether Mr. Ran was interrogated.
At 9 p.m., the police used another private car to take Ms. Hu home, while keeping Mr. Ran in custody. Ms. Hu was notified on the next day that her husband was detained on charges of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used against the practitioners. He was taken to the Xundian Detention Center and was officially arrested on June 15. No family visits were allowed.
Prior to Mr. Ran’s latest arrest, the Kunming City Social Security Bureau suspended his monthly 5,700 yuan pension since November 2021. They claimed that because he was sentenced to three years with five years probation in 2013 for practicing Falun Gong, he had to return the pension received during that time, as a new policy ruled that he wasn’t entitled to any retirement benefits while serving time (even though the Chinese labor law didn’t have such stipulation). The Social Security Bureau has been suspending his monthly pension benefits to pay back the fund he received earlier.
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