(Minghui.org) A Mulan County, Heilongjiang Province resident has been secretly sentenced to a 1.5-year prison term for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Chu Zhanhua, 60, was detained at a secret location in Harbin (capital city of Heilongjiang Province) after being arrested in May 2021. The authorities barred her family from visiting her and also kept them in the dark of her case status. Her son recently found out about her sentencing on the court’s website. She is scheduled to be released on January 3, 2023.
Without being allowed to visit her, her family is very worried about whether she is being tortured while in custody for upholding her faith.
Ms. Chu took up Falun Gong on January 1, 1999. She credits the practice for curing her headaches, an eye condition, and rheumatism. After the persecution began six months later, she went to Beijing three times to appeal for Falun Gong and was detained and given a 16-month labor camp term.
She was first arrested on February 10, 2000 outside the state council appeals office in Beijing and taken back to Mulan County. She was held at the Mulan County No. 2 Detention Center for 83 days, where she was physically and verbally abused, as well as forced to perform unpaid labor.
Ms. Chu was subjected to constant harassment and home ransackings after being released. Not long after, she went to Beijing to appeal again and was arrested at Tiananmen Square. The authorities continued to harass her after she was sent back home, which rendered her unable to live a normal life, and prompted her third appeal in Beijing.
She was arrested this time for distributing Falun Gong materials in Beijing, held at the Chongwen District Detention Center for 43 days, then transferred to a centralized detention facility, where the inmates were instigated by the guards to beat and verbally abuse her and other practitioners. The inmates also forced the practitioners to do intensive unpaid labor and cut the practitioners’ hair into a mess.
Ms. Chu was later taken to the Beijing Women’s Forced Labor Camp and held there for 16 months.
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