(Minghui.org) Two Dazhou City, Sichuan Province residents were sentenced to prison on September 12, 2023, for their shared faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Liu Mingzhen, 72, and Ms. Li Jinru, 59, were arrested on October 17, 2022, and appeared in the Dachuan District Court on June 9, 2023, before being convicted three months later. Ms. Liu was given 4.5 years and fined 30,000 yuan. Ms. Li was sentenced to 5.5 years with a 50,000 yuan fine.
Ms. Li refused to sign her verdict and vowed to appeal. She had previously served 1.5 years of forced labor and 5 years in prison for practicing Falun Gong. Both she and Ms. Liu have developed serious health problems following their latest arrests.
Ms. Liu’s detention put her family in a dire situation. Her son, who is divorced and lives with her, drives a taxi to make a living and works until late at night every day. After her arrest, he had to spend 4,000 yuan every month on an aide to care for his father, a dementia patient. The financial burden and the worries about his mother almost crushed him. He and his sister went to various government agencies to seek their mother’s release, to no avail.
In July 2022, Wang (male) and Zhou (female) from the Sichuan Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) went to Dazhou City to work with their subordinate PLACs in Dazhou City and Dachuan District.
The PLAC is an extra-judicial agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong. It has branches at every government level.
Wang and Zhou led their subordinates to collect Falun Gong practitioners’ information through phone tapping, Skynet (the communist regime’s massive video surveillance network), and big data analytics. Ms. Liu and Ms. Li were among the targeted practitioners.
More than ten agents, led by Huang Xianfeng of the Dachuan District Police Department, raided Ms. Liu and Ms. Li’s homes on October 17, 2022. They confiscated the two women’s Falun Gong books and informational materials, portraits of the Falun Gong founder, and electronic devices.
According to insiders, the agents were from the Cuiping Police Station, the Xianhe Road Police Station, the Xinqiao Community on Cuiping Street, and the Caojialiang Community on Sanliping Street.
The police took Ms. Liu, Ms. Li, and Ms. Li’s husband to the Dachuan District Police Department and interrogated them separately for two days, before taking them to Nanfang Hospital.
Ms. Liu and Ms. Li’s husband were transferred to the Wanyuan Detention Center on October 23, 2022, and then to the Dazhou City Detention Center two weeks later. Ms. Li’s husband was released around November 24, 2022.
The police attempted to get the Wanyuan Detention Center to admit Ms. Li on October 23, 2022, but she was denied admission. They took her to Dazhou City Central Hospital and kept her there for about two weeks, before moving her to Nanfang Hospital.
During her detention at the two hospitals, Ms. Li was watched around the clock, with three shifts of police in groups of two taking turns monitoring her every day. They cuffed one of her hands to the bed frame and didn’t allow her to step out of her hospital room. The handcuffs cut deep into her flesh and left deep marks. Her arm hurt so much from the long-term cuffing that she couldn’t lift it.
The police kept interrogating her and threatened her with the safety of her husband and other family members. Before long, Ms. Li exhibited symptoms of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and diabetic complications (such as peripheral neuropathy affecting her heart, liver, and kidneys). She felt waves of pain going through her body and from time to time she also lost control of her bladder.
Despite her declining health, the police kept her in Nanfang Hospital until December 4, 2022, when a new wave of COVID-19 outbreak hit multiple officers and hospital workers. They released her on six-month house arrest.
While held at the Dazhou City Detention Center, Ms. Liu was interrogated with torture and threatened. She developed high blood pressure too. Her son and daughter went to relevant government agencies to seek her release but were given the runaround and threatened.
Ms. Liu and Ms. Li appeared in the Dachuan District Court on June 9, 2023, and were convicted on September 12. Judge Qu Shen presided over the trial, with the assistance of judges Qing Xin and Yang Su, as well as judges’ assistant Tong Xiaofang and clerk Wang Xuejiao.
It is unclear whether Ms. Li had been taken back into custody after her court hearing in June 2023, when her six-month house arrest expired.
Ms. Liu credits Falun Gong for freeing her from her numerous illnesses, including coronary heart disease, cerebral arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries in the brain), vertigo, and lower back pain. Her good health saved her family from paying her medical expenses and also enabled her to take good care of her husband, who suffered from dementia.
Ms. Liu’s quick temper also improved after she took up Falun Gong in February 2004. She became more patient, kind, tolerant, and sincere. Once she went to her bank to make a deposit of 600 yuan and the teller erroneously recorded 6,000 yuan in her account. She found out about it after returning home and immediately notified the bank to correct the mistake.
Having had a positive experience with Falun Gong, Ms. Liu worked hard to raise awareness of the persecution of the life-transforming practice. She was arrested on July 21, 2008, by about ten agents from the Dachuan District Domestic Security Office. They put her in criminal detention at Xuanhan County Detention Center in Dazhou City.
The police instigated the head inmate in Ms. Liu’s cell to try to coerce her into revealing the source of the Falun Gong informational materials that she was caught distributing. They promised to release her as soon as she complied but threatened to arrest her daughter if she refused.
Ms. Liu didn’t comply with the police and was punished. The head inmate beat her with a hard plastic slipper and forced her to clean up the toilet and mop the floor. She was later given one year and three months of forced labor and transferred to the Dachuan District Lockup on September 25, 2008. Not long after, the lockup director and a police officer took her to the Nanmusi Labor Camp in Zizhong County, Sichuan Province.
The labor camp guards ordered her to write statements to renounce her faith. Ms. Liu refused to comply and was punished. She was not allowed to sleep or talk to anyone. She was also forced to sit on a small stool or do forced labor without pay for extended periods of time. She soon developed high blood pressure and was released on parole on December 5, 2008.
Ms. Liu’s next arrest took place on June 10, 2010, while she was visiting a fellow Falun Gong practitioner. About six agents from the Dachuan District Domestic Security Office, the Nanwai Police Station, and the Huaxi Street Committee took her to the Fuxing Lockup afterward. She was detained for 15 days.
More than a dozen agents arrested Ms. Liu on August 7, 2012, as soon as she returned home from grocery shopping. The arresting officers were from the Dazhou City Domestic Security Office, Dazhou City 610 Office, Dachuan District Domestic Security Office, Gayun Police Station, and Caojialiang Community. They took her to the Dazhou City Brainwashing Center. She developed high blood pressure (with systolic pressure at 200 mmHg) and was released 14 days later.
Ms. Li took up Falun Gong in October 1995 and became a more caring wife and a more filial daughter-in-law. Her mother-in-law suffered from high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, gallstones, and other diseases. The older woman further developed hemiplegia (paralysis in one side of her body) in 2009 for some unknown medical reasons. She soiled her pants several times a day, but Ms. Li never hesitated to clean her up and make sure she stayed comfortable.
Such a good daughter-in-law, however, was repeatedly targeted for practicing Falun Gong. Prior to her latest ordeal, she was arrested multiple times, resulting in a 1.5-year forced labor term in 2001 and a 5-year prison sentence given in 2011. She was on the brink of death several times due to the torture.
Ms. Li’s family was also affected during the decades-long persecution. Her father, who had dementia, became paralyzed after she was given forced labor and passed away in 2006, five years after her mother’s death. Her husband almost died from hypertension due to the distress.
Fearing being implicated in the persecution, Ms. Li’s parents-in-law, who were living with her and her husband, often scolded her and attempted to drive her out of the home if she continued to practice Falun Gong. As she nearly lost her life twice during her detention, they were worried it could affect her son, who had become withdrawn from the persecution. They once admitted that if this persecution didn’t happen, they wouldn’t have treated Ms. Li this way, and would have recognized her as a good daughter-in-law as they did before the persecution began.
For details of Ms. Li’s past persecution, refer to the following related report.
Sichuan Woman Suffers Decades of Persecution for Her Faith, Family Implicated