(Minghui.org) Ms. Xu Yufang, in her 70s, was home on November 7, 2017 when a group of officers suddenly broke in and turned her place upside down.

The police next drove her to the local Ju’nan County Court, where a judge announced that she had just been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered her to serve time at Linyi City Detention Center.

Ms. Xu was targeted because she refused to renounce Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime. She went on a hunger strike at the detention center to protest the illegal detention, as no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong.

More than a dozen guards held her down to force feed her. Her blood pressure soon shot up to unusually high levels.

The detention center called Ms. Xu’s family on November 10, asking them to pick her up. Her loved ones refused to comply with the demand and requested that she be sent back home by the guards.

Ms. Xu told her family that she had received two summons from the court in October 2017. She ignored the request for her to appear in court because she should never have been prosecuted for exercising her constitutional right to freedom of belief. The court then ordered police to arrest her on November 7.

Ms. Xu’s latest arrest was preceded by an earlier arrest around May 22, 2017. She was released on bail hours later after she failed the required medical examination for admission to Linyi City Detention Center. The local police never loosened their grip on her, and they managed to get the court to convict her less than six months later.

Ju’nan County Police Station: +86-5397224744Chief Jiang Huangqing and deputy chief Li Hongsen