(Minghui.org) A 60-year-old woman in Suining City, Sichuan Province, was sentenced to one year because she practices Falun Gong, Minghui.org recently learned.
Ms. Li Yuqiong’s prison sentence stemmed from her initial arrest on August 20, 2020, after a plainclothes officer saw her distributing information about Falun Gong. She was interrogated at the Zhenjiangsi Police Station. The police confiscated the Falun Gong materials and her money. As she refused to answer questions, they tried to use facial recognition technology to identify her. They hit her and held her head down as she struggled, before they were finally able to scan her face.
After the police retrieved Ms. Li’s information and address, they told her husband to come to the police station, and they interrogated and photographed him.
That afternoon, five officers ransacked her home and confiscated more than 30 Falun Gong books, a MP3 player, and some banknotes with information about Falun Gong printed on them––a creative way practitioners use to get around the information censorship in China to raise awareness about the persecution of their faith.
At 10 p.m. the police took Ms. Li to a hospital for a physical exam (including having her blood drawn). Afterwards she was sent to the city detention center for 10 days.
After Ms. Li was released on August 30, 2020, the police kept harassing her at home. An officer with the Lanjiang Town Police Station called her on December 30, 2020. He demanded to know her address and he ordered her to renounce Falun Gong. She refused to comply.
Ms. Li went with another practitioner, Ms. Jiang Taiju, in her 60s, to talk to people about Falun Gong at a local park on August 13, 2021. They were arrested by officers from the Zhenjiangsi Police Station. Soon after, two officers, surnamed Deng and Liu, from the Chuanshan District Domestic Security Office, arrived and interrogated both women. When they remained silent, the police searched their police database and found their addresses.
The police ransacked the practitioners’ homes that afternoon and took them to the hospital for physical exams, before giving them ten days of detention at the Suining City Lockup.
After Ms. Li was released, the police attempted to force her to sign statements to renounce Falun Gong. She went into hiding.
Mayor Tian of Lanjiang Town led a few police officers to monitor Ms. Li’s home on March 18, 2024. They followed her inside when she returned home. They questioned her and asked if she still practiced Falun Gong. She showed them the Ministry of Public Security Document No. 39, a cult list which doesn’t include Falun Gong; and State Council Press and Publication Administration Document No. 50, which lifted the ban on Falun Gong publications. The officers left that evening, but returned eight days later, on March 26, to harass her again.
Ms. Li realized she was being followed by two young men while she was grocery shopping on the morning of August 7, 2025. At 11 a.m. that day, two people claiming to be property management personnel demanded to check her apartment, with the excuse that it was leaking water into the unit below. When her family refused to open the door, they shut down their power supply, when the temperature was 40°C (104°F). For the next few days, the two young men stayed outside of Ms. Li’s home and monitored her.
Ms. Li was arrested shortly after this and she later sentenced to one year in prison.
This is the second time Ms. Li has been sentenced to prison. When she was passing through the checkpoint at the Chengdu City train station to catch a train back to Suining on July 28, 2017, the police arrested her after finding Falun Gong materials in her bag. She was sentenced to one year by the Chengdu City Railroad Transportation Court on November 24, 2017, and she was sent to Longquanyi Women’s Prison on March 21, 2018.
Related Reports:
Suining City, Sichuan Province: 57 Falun Gong Arrested or Harassed in the First Half of 2022
Woman Struck in the Face and Has Her Face Scanned Following Arrest for Her Faith