(Minghui.org) Ms. Yuan Jingxiu, a 54-year-old electrical design engineer has been detained incommunicado for nearly six months, after she was arrested at work on June 26, 2023 for practicing Falun Gong.
According to Ms. Yuan’s family, they received a call from her following her arrest. She described being held in a dark room, but she had no idea where it was. Her family have not heard from her since then.
Ms. Yuan, of Liaoyang City, Liaoning Province, began practicing Falun Gong, a mind-body discipline, in August 1997. When the communist regime ordered the nationwide persecution of Falun Gong two years later, she was repeatedly arrested for remaining firm in her faith. She served two terms at the notorious Masanjia Forced Labor Camp and was fired by the Liaoyang Electric Power Survey and Design Institute. She later landed a job at the Zhongding Electric Power Engineering Design Company, only to be arrested and detained again.
Below is a recap of the persecution Ms. Yuan suffered in the past 24 years.
Shortly after the persecution started, Ms. Yuan was pressured to renounce her faith but she never submitted to the threats or pressure from the local police and her workplace, including Liu Shupeng, chief of the Dianjian Police Station, Zhou Xuechao, director of the Guopin Street Committee, Cui Airong, executive of the Liaoyang Electric Power Construction Corporation and Zhang Weike, director of the human resources department.
Ms. Yuan was having dinner with her father the day before Chinese New Year, January 23, 2001, when police chief Liu and officer Cao suddenly broke in. The police coerced her father into joining them in pressuring her to renounce her faith. She refused to give in and was arrested. The police put her on criminal detention at the Liaoyang City Detention Center.
While she was detained, police chief Liu, her company executive Cui, as well as staff members from the Shizuizi Forced Labor (who were experienced in transforming Falun Gong practitioners), took turns bombarding her with anti-Falun Gong propaganda, attempting to make her stop practicing. She was under tremendous pressure and suffered intense headaches.
After they failed to transform Ms. Yuan, her workplace fired her on April 6, 2001 and the police took her to the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in Shenyang City to serve a one-year term.
The labor camp guards deprived Ms. Yuan of sleep and tortured her. She started a hunger strike in protest and was force fed. In just two months, she was reduced to only skin and bones. Her family was also ordered to pay for the force feedings.
When Ms. Yuan was released in February 2002, police chief Liu and street committee director Zhou continued to harass her. As a result she was unable to live a normal life.
Ms. Yuan went to the State Council’s Appeals Office in Beijing on May 30, 2002, demanding the right to practice Falun Gong. In retaliation, police chief Liu coordinated with the Taizihe Police Department in Liaoyang City to give Ms. Yuan a three-year term at the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp.
Ms. Yuan was held in a triangle-shaped isolation room. She went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution and was forced to do intensive labor without pay. Guard Zhang Xiurong ordered the inmates to tie her up and forced her to sign prepared statements to renounce Falun Gong and slander its founder. The physical and mental torment didn’t stop until she was released in May 2005.
The police later flagged her ID and tracked her when she was traveling. While driving home from an out-of-town business trip in late 2019, Ms. Yuan was stopped by the police at a highway entrance. The police searched her car and questioned her. Similar incidents happened a few more times, including when she traveled by train.
Because she filed a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime who ordered the persecution of Falun Gong, Ms. Yuan was seized by officers of the Xinhua Police Station on June 27, 2016 and held in a police station overnight.