(Minghui.org) Three senior women in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, were arrested on July 29, 2020, for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline also known as Falun Dafa that has been persecuted in China since July 1999.
Ms. Liang Ailing is currently in Lanzhou No. 1 Detention Center while Ms. Qi Yulian and Ms. Xue Huilan have been released. All three are retired from the Lanzhou General Machinery Factory in the Qilihe District.
Below is a brief summary of their arrests.
Ms. Qi Yulian
On July 29, Pengjiaping Police Station officers barged into Ms. Qi Yulian's home and raided it. They questioned her husband, asking if anyone had visited them recently. When the officers threatened to prevent their grandson from attending college, her husband was worried and said that someone named Xiao Ming had come by.
Ms. Qi, 74, was taken to the police station to have her blood drawn and fingerprints taken. She was released that night after her husband signed a guarantee statement on her behalf promising to not practice Falun Gong.
The next day, the officers summoned the couple to the police station and told them that there were too many Falun Gong materials confiscated from their home. A day later, the police arrested Ms. Qi again and admitted her to the Lanzhou No. 1 Detention Center.
Ms. Qi's husband couldn't understand why the police had to arrest her again. He almost took his own life, but his neighbor, who told him that his wife didn’t do anything wrong, stopped him. The neighbor told him that it was the police who were committing a crime.
Ms. Xue Huilan
Ms. Xue, 77, was at home on July 29, 2020, when three plainclothes officers showed up and asked her if she’d gone to a new residential area on July 14. They suspected her of distributing Falun Gong materials there. Ms. Xue acknowledged that she passed out information about how the communist regime covered up the pandemic there.
After questioning her, the officers ransacked her home. They took her calendar, MP3 player, memory card, Falun Gong books, and a picture of a little doll that had “Falun Dafa is good” printed on it.
Ms. Xue was taken to the Pengjiaping Police Station, where she saw Ms. Qi when she went to the restroom.
While the police were interrogating Ms. Xue, a woman came over and threatened to have her sentenced to seven years.
Both practitioners later had their fingerprints taken and blood drawn. When Ms. Xue asked why they were collecting her blood, she was told that it was to check if she smoked opium.
Before releasing the practitioners, the police forced Ms. Xue's son and Ms. Qi's husband to sign the statements renouncing Falun Gong on their behalf.
The police also said that they wanted to find Xiao Ming and asked Ms. Xue's son if he knew the person, to which he said he did not.
Ms. Xue and Ms. Qi were released at 9 p.m. the same day.
Ms. Liang Ailing
Ms. Liang, who is 70 and disabled, was arrested at her home on July 29 and has since been detained in the Lanzhou No. 1 Detention Center.
Ms. Liang had an accident at work when she was young and lost her right hand after it was caught in a machine. After the accident, her boyfriend broke up with her. Hurt both physically and mentally, she started to smoke.
Although Ms. Liang got married later on and had a son, she didn't stop smoking. It was only after she started to practice Falun Gong that she stopped smoking and finally found inner peace.
