(Minghui.org) My mother is almost 70 years old. Her daughter-in-law was first sentenced to four and a half years in prison, and later her son, Mr. Zhang Weizhong, was sentenced to two years in prison. She was running between Tangshan Court and various government departments in the hopes that she could get her son released, but to no avail. She is at home alone with her middle-school aged grandson. They have to rely on support from relatives and friends to survive.
I'm Mr. Zhang Weizhong's older sister. My brother and his wife, Ms. Deng Xiuyan, have repeatedly been persecuted because they practice Falun Gong.
People from the Yangguanlin town government and police station climbed over the wall multiple times in 2010 and into Mr. Zhang's courtyard to try to arrest him.
On January 4, 2011, led by deputy mayor Li Guiyong of Yangguanlin Town and Li Guodong from the police station, police officers broke into Mr. Zhang's home again and arrested his wife Ms. Deng Xiuyan, as well as my cousin. His home was ransacked. The police confiscated their printer and Falun Gong books, and other personal items. Ms. Deng was held at the detention center in Fengrun District. Her family went to the police station several times to demand her release. My mother and other relatives went to demand her release again on the morning of May 20, 2011. It turned out that the head of the police station Wang Xiuxin and police officers arrested my mother and the other four relatives. They were taken to the detention center in Fengrun District and held there for 15 days. Afterward, my mother and three relatives were sentenced to one year of forced labor. My mother served the term outside the labor camp.
Mr. Zhang Weizhong was arrested by police officers from the Yutian County and Yangguanlin Police Station and taken to the Fengrun Detention Center on June 14, 2011. The Fengrun court secretly sentenced Ms. Deng Xiuyan to four and a half years in prison on June 28. Then she was transferred to the Shijiazhuang Women's Prison. We got a lawyer for Mr. Zhang. The lawyer made several requests to see him, but the requests were denied. Even after the first hearing, he was not allowed to meet with us or the lawyer. On March 17, 2012, Mr. Zhang was sentenced to two years in prison by the Fengrun Court.
The lawyer and we went to see Mr. Zhang at the Fengrun Detention Center on May 8, 2012, but they only allowed the lawyer to see him. The lawyer told us that his physical condition was very bad, he had thrown up everything he ate, and he could only lay in bed. My mother was so worried about him that she fell ill.
We went to the detention center again on May 22 and demanded to see him. The head of the detention center threatened us, and said that they would take him to prison if he doesn't cooperate.
