(Minghui.org) A Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province resident was secretly sentenced to five years for her faith in Falun Gong on August 7, 2020.
Ms. Shi Chengjie was arrested in late April 2020. The police ransacked her home and confiscated her Falun Gong books. She was released after the Luobei County Detention Center refused to admit her.
Ms. Shi was taken back to the Luobei County Detention Center on August 18 following her sentencing.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Shi took up Falun Gong in 1996. She credits the practice for curing her many ailments, including cholecystitis, nephritis, Kashin-Beck disease, uterine fibroids, and rheumatoid arthritis. Because of upholding the faith that gave her a new life, she has been repeatedly persecuted in the past two decades.
On February 9, 2000, Ms. Shi went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong and was arrested. She was taken back to Hegang on February 13 and detained at Hegang City No.2 Detention Center for three months and then the Hegang No.1 Detention Center for eleven months.
Ms. Shi was targeted in a mass arrest of nearly 50 practitioners on September 7, 2005. She was interrogated around the clock by four officers and deprived of sleep. She held a hunger strike to protest the persecution. The police gave her three years of forced labor, but she was denied admission and released on bail after she failed the physical examination due to her condition stemming from the month-long torture.
Ms. Shi was arrested again on September 10, 2006. Two officers kicked her in the back and chest. She escaped from the window of the police station that night, only to be arrested again. The officers beat and kicked her even harder, especially in her head.
Ms. Shi fell into a coma and became incontinent after the beating. A physical examination found that she had severe bone fractures in her pelvis and left thigh, as well as extensive internal bleeding. She was resuscitated overnight and the police paid 4,700 yuan for her medical fees.
An officer named Mao Shu said to her, “We won’t be held accountable for beating a Falun Gong practitioner to death. You are dying for nothing.”
Ms. Shi was arrested one more time, on October 1, 2012, and interrogated in the police station around the clock. The police tied her to an iron chair and didn’t let her sleep. She was released after paying 8,000 yuan bail.