(Minghui.org) A man in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, has been detained in Yichang City, Hubei Province, for two months because he practices Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999.
Mr. Li Ruichao, 51, traveled to Yichang in May 2026 and was recorded by a surveillance camera when he wrote “Falun Dafa is good” with chalk in public areas. The Yichang police identified him through the big data system and informed their counterparts in Shijiazhuang.
Mr. Li was arrested at his apartment in Shijiazhuang on the evening of May 21 and detained at the Xinhua Police Station overnight. The police returned to his home the next day and confiscated four Falun Gong books, a laptop, and two cell phones. They also searched his other residence in the countryside in Wuji County (which is under the administration of Shijiazhuang) but did not find any items related to Falun Gong. Mr. Li was then extradited to Hubei Province and turned over to officers from the Xiling District Police Department in Yichang City. He was soon admitted to the Yichang City Third Detention Center.
Mr. Li’s mother received a mail from the Xiling District Police Department on June 12. It indicated that the Xiling District Procuratorate had issued a formal arrest warrant for her son on June 6, with the charge of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to frame Falun Gong practitioners in China.
According to Mr. Li’s lawyer who had visited him, Mr. Li is eating very little in the detention center and he has lost a significant amount of weight.
Past persecution
Mr. Li began practicing Falun Gong in 1998, and his severe stomach condition soon disappeared. After the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting the practice in 1999, he was arrested multiple times and forced to live away from home for years to hide from the police.
Mr. Li was arrested while working in Beijing on July 9, 2009, and he was given a two-year labor camp term. He served time at the Xin’an Forced Labor Camp and the Tuanhe Forced Labor Camp in Beijing, and the Tumuji Forced Labor Camp in Inner Mongolia. While in custody, he was beaten so badly that he was unable to keep food down and vomited everything he ate. He also struggled to stand and had difficulty breathing. His weight quickly dropped from 165 lbs to 130 lbs.
On July 10, 2011, only two days after he was released, Mr. Li was arrested again and held at the Hebei Province Brainwashing Center (also known as the Hebei Province Legal Education Center) for a month.
All content published on this website is copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
