(Minghui.org) Ms. Zhou Meijuan, a 46-year-old resident in Jiading City, Shanghai, remains detained following her arrest more than four months ago.
Ms. Zhou's latest arrest was triggered by her efforts to appeal against her employer's unfair treatment of her for her faith.
Ms. Zhou was first arrested in July 2017 and detained for one and half months for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime. After she was released, her employer, Anting Elementary School, withheld 7,000 yuan of bonuses which she earned during the first half of that year.
As no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong, Ms. Zhou argued that her school's treatment of her was unfair. She applied for an administrative reconsideration with the local government, which declined to handle her case. She then wrote letters to the district education bureau director, a section chief in the education bureau, the local teachers' union president, and the local women's federation. Nonetheless, no one listened to her, and she proceeded to file a compliant with the local labor dispute arbitration committee.
Her school principal refused to return her bonus and demanded that she write a statement renouncing her faith in her annual self-evaluation report. He warned her that she would fail her annual evaluation if she didn't comply with his demand.
Ms. Zhou stated in her evaluation that she had broken no laws by practicing Falun Gong and that her constitutional right to freedom of belief should be protected, not punished.
The principal reported her to police, who arrested her at her school on December 26, 2017. None of the officers were uniformed, nor did they produce any IDs or arrest warrant. They seized Ms. Zhou and confiscated the key to her home. They proceeded to ransack her home when no one was around. She was not given a list of the confiscated items as is required by law.
Ms. Zhou later learned that Zhang Wei and Fan Dongliang of the Jiading District Police Office, along with community police officer Shi Biao were the ones that arrested her.
The police submitted her case to the local Procuratorate on March 28, 2018. While Ms. Zhou remains at Jiading District Detention Center, her family mailed a letter to the local Procuratorate, urging them to drop the case against her.
