(Minghui.org) A 74-year-old Chongqing resident was admitted to prison on January 3, 2024, to serve a 1.5-year term for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Duan Zhenwei, a retired civil servant, was arrested at home on June 2, 2023. Three plainclothes officers and two uniformed officers broke into her home after 8 p.m. that day and confiscated her printer, computer, flash drives, and some Falun Gong informational materials. Her grandson’s study materials and two printers were also seized.
The police said they targeted Ms. Duan after their surveillance cameras recorded her putting up Falun Gong flyers the day before. They took her to the Nan’an District Detention Center.
The Jiulongpo District Court tried Ms. Duan on November 9, 2023, but did not allow her family to attend the hearing. Her loved ones learned on December 18 that she had been sentenced to one and a half years in prison, with a 2,000-yuan fine. She was transferred to the Chongqing Women’s Prison located in Zouma Town, Jiulongpo District on January 3, 2024.
Ms. Duan being imprisoned was her family’s biggest fear. They were all beyond grateful when her Meniere’s syndrome, cataracts, alopecia, rheumatism, and insomnia disappeared after she took up Falun Gong in 1997, but they were always worried about her safety when one Falun Gong practitioner after another that they knew got arrested for their faith after the persecution started in 1999. Now that she’s jailed, her loved ones struggle even more to cope with the apparent injustice when law-abiding citizens like her are persecuted for exercising their constitutional right to freedom of belief.
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