(Minghui.org) Ms. Wang Guilan’s family has not received any official updates about her, after the 76-year-old woman in Pei County, Jiangsu Province, was tried by a court in Shanghai on March 6, 2020, because she practices Falun Gong. They don’t even know where she is being held and are calling on anyone with information about her to come forward.
Ms. Wang was staying at her daughter’s home in Shanghai, and was reported by the community janitor Zhang Xiujin for putting up Falun Gong information on utility poles and walls on September 24, 2019. The police soon tracked her down through surveillance camera footage. They broke into her daughter’s home and arrested her that day. Her Falun Gong books and informational materials were confiscated.
Ms. Wang was placed under criminal detention the next day. She was formally arrested on October 31, 2019. The Shanghai City First Intermediate Court designated the Fengxian District Court to prosecute Ms. Wang. She stood trial on March 6, 2020, and her family has since been kept in the dark of her whereabouts and case status. Given the ongoing forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China, her family is deeply concerned for her safety.
Prior to her latest arrest, Ms. Wang has been repeatedly targeted after the Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999.
She was arrested in November 2004 after being reported for distributing Falun Gong informational materials. The Pei County Court sentenced her to three years on May 23, 2005. She served time at the Nanjing Women’s Prison. Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu.
Ms. Wang was arrested again in August 2010, after someone reported her for talking to people about Falun Gong. The Pei County Court secretly sentenced her to four years on September 13, just a few weeks later.
On May 2, 2016, less than two years after she was released, Ms. Wang was arrested one more time—again for distributing Falun Gong materials. She was first given 15 days of administrative detention and then placed under criminal detention on May 10. The Pei County Procuratorate approved her arrest on May 18 and she was transferred from a local lockup to the Xuzhou City Detention Center. Xuzhou oversees Pei County.
Ms. Wang stood trial at the Pei County Court on September 8, 2016, and was sentenced to two years with a 5,000-yuan fine on February 20, 2017.