(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Zheng Lanmei was arrested when she was distributing Falun Gong informational materials on the afternoon of August 16, 2016.

She was taken to the Xinhua Road Police Station in Shijiazhuang City. The police took Ms. Zheng in handcuffs to her home that night and ransacked it. She was given 10 days of detention and taken to a detention center two days later.

Ms. Zheng, 59, started practicing Falun Gong in 1997. After the Chinese Communist regime began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, Ms. Zheng went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong in 2001. She was arrested. She was given two years of forced labor without a trial and taken to the Shijiazhuang Forced Labor Camp, where she was tortured.

She was once put in an abandoned restroom and forced to sit on a small stool. Her hands were handcuffed to the two legs of the stool, which forced her upper body to remain bent over. She was in this position for two days.

The guards then handcuffed her to a bunk bed several days later, with one hand cuffed to the leg of the bottom bed and the other hand cuffed to the top frame. She stayed in that position for five days. When she came down with a fever, guards instructed other prisoners to pry her mouth open and force drugs down her throat. Her front teeth became loose as a result.

Ms. Zheng's husband divorced her later on due to the intense pressure from the authorities. A once happy family was broken apart. Ms. Zheng did not have a job, and since she did not have much schooling when she was young, she had to make a living by doing all kinds of odd jobs. When she reached the age of retirement, she had no savings and had to continue to work.

When her eyesight became poor, she could no longer work. Someone helped her to apply for the subsistence allowance. After it was approved, she got about 500 yuan ($75 USD) a month.

Ms. Zheng filed a legal complaint in 2015 against Jiang Zemin, former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), for initiating the persecution of Falun Gong.

She was harassed many times by staff from the Jinzhu Street Residential Office. They tried to force her to sign the three statements to renounce Falun Gong. They threatened that they would stop her subsistence allowance if she refused. Ms. Zheng refused, and they indeed stopped allowance, which was her only source of income. She has not received her allowance for two months.

Background

In 1999 Jiang Zemin, as head of the CCP, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.

The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners in the past 17 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.

Under his personal direction, the CCP established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. This organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's policy regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.

Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.

People responsible for the persecution:Yang Jianhui (杨剑辉), director of Xinhua Road Police Station: +86-13903216063 (cell)Jia Zhijun (贾志军): deputy director of Xinhua Road Police Station: +86-13931988779 (cell)Wang Yunfei (王云飞): captain of Xinhua District Domestic Security Division: +86-13931976997 (cell)Zhu Xiaoguang (朱晓光): vice captain of Xinhua District Domestic Security Division: +86-13931976537 (cell)(More perpetrators' contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)