(Minghui.org) Ms. Zhao Lanying from Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province was sentenced to three and a half years on February 20, 2025 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Zhao who is a retired railway worker, was arrested in her rental place in Harbin (the capital city of Heilongjiang, about 200 miles away from Mudanjiang) on September 20, 2024. When her lawyer visited her, she told him that she fainted once after her arrest and that the police interrogated her three times. They produced photos and videos depicting a woman distributing Falun Gong information materials and ordered her to say she was that woman.
While there was nothing wrong with passing out Falun Gong materials, Ms. Zhao did not do what the police alleged she did. She firmly denied the allegations. The Daoli District Court in Harbin tried her on February 20, 2025 and convicted her at the end of the hearing.
This is not the first time that Ms. Zhao has been targeted for her faith, which she took up in June 1998 and credits for curing her neurological heart disease, slipped disc, bone hyperplasia, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, and autonomic neurosis.
Ms. Zhao went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong on February 27, 2000. She was arrested and taken back to Heilongjiang. She was given 39 days of criminal detention and extorted 2,000 yuan.
The police seized Ms. Zhao at the end of 2000 and took her to a labor camp to serve a one-year term. The local 610 Office agents extorted more than 1,000 yuan from her when they released her.
After another arrest on October 26, 2002, Ms. Zhao was brutally tortured in police custody. They later gave her three years of forced labor but she was denied admission to the local labor camp due to her poor health. The police extorted 15,500 yuan before they let her go.
Ms. Zhao’s next arrest took place in the early morning of November 4, 2012. She was later sentenced to 4.5 years and admitted to the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison. The guards there forced her to watch videos that slander Falun Gong and sit on a small stool (a form of torture) for hours.
When she discovered that she was followed by plainclothes agents on October 7, 2019, Ms. Zhao fled her home in Mudanjiang, only to be arrested in her rental place in Harbin on September 20, 2024. She was sentenced to 3.5 years on February 20, 2025.
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