(Minghui.org) The Political and Legal Affairs Committee in Yi County, Hebei Province, issued a document in August 2019 requiring all local businesses and organizations to force their employees who practice Falun Gong to write guarantee statements to renounce their faith.
The practitioners are threatened with the loss of their jobs or having their salaries suspended if they refuse to comply.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since July 1999. The Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) is an extrajudicial agency tasked to execute the persecution policy.
Below are some of the practitioners who have been harassed or affected in the new wave of persecution:
Ms. Sun Yakun
The director of the Agricultural Bank of China in Yi County tried to force Ms. Sun Yakun, an employee of the bank, to write a guarantee statement to renounce her faith in October 2019.
When Ms. Sun refused to comply, the director turned to her husband and deceived him into believing that Ms. Sun would lose a bonus of more than 5,000 yuan a month if she refused to write the statement. Her husband pressured her to write the statement for a week, causing disharmony in the family.
Ms. Zhao Yanmei and Ms. Gu Xiangrui
In October 2019, officials at the local education bureau asked Ms. Zhao Yanmei and Ms. Gu Xiangrui, both retired teachers, to meet with them.
When Ms. Zhao didn't show up, her daughter was forced to sign a document without being allowed to read it.
Ms. Gu went to meet with her school’s new principal as directed by the education bureau. While she was talking with the principal, an official videotaped her.
Ms. Zhao Limei
Wang Zheng, the deputy principal of a branch of the Open University of China, called and sent messages to Ms. Zhao Limei, a teacher at the university, on October 14, 2019, informing her that the PLAC had instructed them to suspend her pay if she refused to write a statement to renounce Falun Gong.
He told her that he was following orders from his superiors, who also called Ms. Zhao’s son and told him to encourage his mother to give up her faith.
Ms. Zhao was summoned to school on the morning of November 29, 2019. While she was reading the PLAC document that principal Wang handed her, another deputy principal, Yang Limeng, tried to take videos of her. After Ms. Zhao stopped him, the principal tried recording her again by placing the phone in his jacket.
Ms. Zhao went to the local education bureau that afternoon to explain to the officers there that the persecution didn’t have any legal basis and urged them to stop participating in it. They said, “The Party pays us, so we will do anything they ask us to do.”
Ms. Zhu Lihua
The head of the Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Baoding City told Ms. Zhu Lihua to write a guarantee statement in August 2019, saying that she would be fired if she refused. The deputy secretary has refused to let Ms. Zhu take a leave until she has signed the statement.
Ms. Liu Rongzhen
Officials from the Civil Affairs Bureau sent a staff member to Ms. Liu Rongzhen's home to get her to sign a guarantee statement. When she refused, the staff member forced her husband to sign it.
Others
Other practitioners who were harassed at this time included: Ms. Lu Na, who works for the Baichi Health Center; Mr. Zheng Lianshe, an employee of the Industry and Information Technology Bureau; and Mr. Huang Lei, an employee of the local power bureau.
Parties involved in these acts of persecution:
Shi Laishun (史来顺), Communist Party secretary of Yi County: +86-13630855666, +86-17631245756Tang Junmin (汤鞠敏), secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee: +86-13323221122
