(Minghui.org) A former government official was recently sentenced to 5.5 years in prison for raising awareness of the Chinese communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong, a mind-body practice based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
Ms. Liu Jialing had previously been sent to forced labor twice for a total of five years and imprisoned once for 9 years for her faith in Falun Gong.
The 46-year-old woman went missing on July 20, 2017. Her family later heard that she was kept at the Jinghai Detention Center. The news came recently that she was sent to Tianjin Women's Prison to serve a 5.5-year-term.
Ms. Liu used to be an official at the Bureau for Environmental Health in Jinghai County, Tianjin City. She was detained twice at the Banqiao Women's Labor Camp, once in 2001 and 2005, for a combined length of five years. During that time, she was deprived of sleep and forced to do slave labor. Under the pressure of officials, her husband divorced her during her first labor camp detention.
After Ms. Liu was released from the labor camp in March 2007, officials at her workplace and local government continued to harass her. Her brother, who had taken her in after her divorce, was forced to ask her to move out. She was also fired from her job for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. She lived by herself in poverty.
Ms. Liu was targeted again when an article detailing her ordeal was published on Minghui.org on June 19, 2007. The article listed the local Jinghai 610 Office, police department, and her former employer as perpetrators in her persecution case.
A group of agents led by the chief of Jinghai Police Department, head of the 610 Office, and local officials arrested Ms. Liu at her home on August 25, 2007. During the process, officers tore her clothes and exposed her breasts in public, leaving bystanders stunned.
After confiscating her computers, over 30,000 yuan in cash, and other personal belongings, officers kept Ms. Liu at the Jinghai Detention Center for 9 months. To protest the torture and forced labor she was subjected to at the center, Ms. Liu went on hunger strikes several times.
She was sentenced to 9 years in 2008 and sent to Tianjin Women's Prison, where she was tortured both physically and psychologically.