(Minghui.org) A Baiyin City, Gansu Province resident was recently issued a formal arrest warrant and is facing indictment for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Si Liping, around 54, was arrested on April 20, 2023 and has since been held at the Baiyin City Detention Center. She asked a person who was recently released from the detention center to relay a message to her family that she had been issued a formal warrant warrant and that she wanted them to hire a lawyer to defend her.
This is not the first time that Ms. Si has been targeted for practicing Falun Gong. She was previously arrested multiple times, resulting in two prison terms.
Earliest Arrests
Ms. Si was arrested in May 2001 when she went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.
Her next arrest took place in late June 2003 while she was at work. A group of officers broke into her workplace and took her to the Baiyin City Police Department. They interrogated her with torture before taking her to the Baiyin City Detention Center, where she faced even more torture.
The detention center guards slapped her in the face with rubber tubes so hard that she still has visible marks on her face today. They also instigated inmates to drag her to the courtyard and put a shackle weighing about 37 pounds on her feet. The shackle was then linked to her handcuff with a very short chain, rendering her unable to stand up or stretch her legs. She could only curl up and her feet became deformed under the weight of the shackle. She went on a hunger strike in protest and soon became emaciated.
The guards removed the shackle on Ms. Si’s 10th day of hunger strike and noticed she could no longer stand on her feet. Only then did they release her. The night of her returning home, she lost consciousness several times. Through doing Falun Gong exercises, however, she miraculously recovered in less than one week.
About one week after Ms. Si recovered, the security guards at her workplace seized her from home and took her to the Wuchuan Brainwashing Center. Two people were assigned to watch and follow her around the clock, not allowing her to do Falun Gong exercises or talk to other practitioners held there.
In order to force her to give up her belief, the brainwashing facility personnel dragged Ms. Si to the torture chamber. They restrained her in a metal chair with her legs secured to the chair legs with a metal bar and her hands twisted behind her back and cuffed to the back of the chair. To add to her suffering, they hung a heavy metal lock to the handcuff. Her wrists bore all the weight of the handcuff and the lock, causing excruciating pain. She also felt like numerous insects were crawling on her body. She screamed in pain and was yelled at by the brainwashing center personnel.
Ms. Si was on her way home from work on the afternoon of September 12, 2016, when several officers from the Tongcheng Police Station suddenly showed up and arrested her. They raided her home the next morning and confiscated a large amount of Falun Gong informational materials. She was taken to the Baiyin City Detention Center later that day.
First Prison Sentence in 2010
Ms. Si was arrested again on October 20, 2010 while distributing Falun Gong informational materials. The Baiyin City Court sentenced her to three years with three years probation in May 2011.
Second Prison Sentence in 2014
While visiting a fellow practitioner on September 19, 2014, Ms. Si was arrested by officers who had been staking outside that practitioner’s home. They took her to the Xiqu Road Police Station and released her hours later.
The Tongcheng Police Station officers arrested Ms. Si on September 12, 2016 and the Baiyin District Court sentenced her to one year on February 7, 2017. She served her entire term at the Baiyin City Detention Center.
Related report:
575 Cases of Falun Gong Practitioners Sentenced for Their Faith Reported in the First Half of 2017
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