(Minghui.org) A resident of Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, was fired from her teaching job 20 years ago for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong. The board of education not only denied her repeated requests to have her job reinstated, but also reported her to the police when she asked for her job back again in 2022. The police installed a surveillance camera and arranged for people in cars or on foot to monitor her, which continues to this day.
Ms. Zhao Xianchang previously served two forced labor camps totaling five years (2000-2002 and 2004-2007) for practicing Falun Gong. Her employer, the Guangshan Third Middle School, terminated her shortly after her arrest in June 2004. After she completed her second forced labor term in 2007, she began her uphill battle to get her job back.
The Guanghan City Board of Education repeatedly denied her requests. When she approached them again in 2022, they reported her to the local Xiangyang Town Police Station and turned over her letter to the chair of the board of education. She went to a post office in a nearby town to mail a letter to relevant government agencies, but that post office gave her letter to the Xiangyang Town Police Station.
The Xiangyang Town Police Station summoned her on June 20, 2022, and accused her of violating the public security administration punishment law. She refused to sign the interrogation records, and the police noted so on the records. While they released her that day, they dispatched people to follow her every day as she juggled various temporary jobs to make a living. When they saw that she passed a certain intersection every day, the police installed a surveillance camera at the intersection.
The monitors assigned to shadow Ms. Zhao were everywhere. Some sat at a tea shop facing her home. As soon as she stepped out the door, they reported her to the police. When she got to her vendor booth (she ran a small business), the community workers there came out to inspect what was in her cart and see whom she talked to.
One day she was working her temporary job at a supermarket when a monitor followed her and insinuated to her coworkers that she was a terrorist because of her faith in Falun Gong. She felt tremendous pressure and soon quit the supermarket job.
Ms. Zhao wheeled her mother, in her 80s, to a local fair in March 2024 and ran into an acquaintance. They hadn’t seen each other for a long time so they chatted for a bit longer. The monitor shadowing her that day eavesdropped on their conversation.
Ms. Zhao wrote a letter to the Xiangyang Town Police Station and the township officials, urging them to stop monitoring her like a criminal because she’d broken no law by practicing Falun Gong or trying to get her job back.
The authorities responded by raiding her home on April 3, 2024. Ms. Zhao was getting ready to tutor to a few students in her home at 3 p.m. that day, when the chief of the Xiangyang Town Police Station broke in with his deputy chief and another officer. The chief ripped off the couplets on the door as he entered. He confiscated a computer and Falun Gong books from Ms. Zhao’s bedroom and a copy of Zhuan Falun (the main text of Falun Gong), and a music player from her mother’s bedroom.
The chief threatened to detain Ms. Zhao for two years and warned her that someone from the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (an extrajudicial agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong) would come the next day. He said before they left, “The Chinese Communist Party is so good yet you are going against it.”
The deputy chief came with two officers and an agent from the Political and Legal Affairs Committee at 11 a.m. the next day. The agent threatened to detain her because she had written a letter to government agencies requesting her job back.
Ms. Zhao is still under surveillance. She had to shut down her tutoring service because no parents dare to send their children to her home for after-school tutoring.
Status of Practitioners Imprisoned in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province