(Minghui.org) A Fushun City, Liaoning Province resident was arrested on April 2, 2019 for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. The police took away her home key and raided her home the same night. They confiscated her personal belongings, and still refused to return the confiscated items after nearly two years.
Ms. Peng Guilan, 78, was reported to the authorities when she was distributing Falun Gong informational booklets on April 2, 2019. Officers An Yang and a few others from Changchun Police Station arrested her.
An Yang took away Ms. Peng's backpack and got her home key. He and several other officers ransacked her home late in the night with none of her family members present. They confiscated her Falun Gong books, a computer, a tablet, a printer, other belongings and cash of more than 10,000 yuan, leaving her home a complete mess.
Ms. Peng was taken to a room in the police station on April 4, 2019, with all of the confiscated items from her home. An Yang ordered her to sign paperwork to confirm that those were her belongings. But she pointed out that the computer and the tablet were not her own, but her family's. An Yang told her to bring the purchase receipts of the computer and the tablet to claim them. Ms. Peng was transferred to the local detention center after signing the documents.
Unable to find her after her arrest, Ms. Peng’s family reported her missing to their local Yong'antai Police Station. The police there learned that she is a Falun Gong practitioner and told her family that Fushun City Domestic Security Division would be the one in charge of her case.
Ms. Peng's eldest son later received two phone calls from the Domestic Security Division but he did not understand what they were talking about and treated the calls as spam calls. Then he and his wife were suspended from their jobs without justification.
Ms. Peng began to have high blood pressure upon arriving at the detention center. With her family’s effort to rescue her, she was released five days later, on April 9. Her son and daughter-in-law were allowed to return to their jobs.
Since then, Ms. Peng and her son repeatedly asked An Yang to return their belongings. Even though they brought the receipts, An Yang still rejected them with various excuses. He also asked for the computer password, but still refused to return the item after Ms. Peng's son gave him the password.
An officer from Yong'antai Police Station came to Ms. Peng's home on August 30, 2019 and announced that she was put under residential surveillance for the next twelve months, even though the maximum period of residential surveillance shall not exceed six months.
The officer asked her to sign the paperwork but she refused. He then threatened her not to go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong since the National Day (October 1) was approaching.
A police officer from Yong'antai police station knocked on Ms. Peng's door again in September 2020 and asked her to go to the police station. She did not open the door and refused to go. She told him that practicing Falun Gong is her basic right and the publication and distribution of Falun Gong books are also legal in China, citing the notice issued by the Chinese publication bureau in 2011. The police listened, then left.
Ms. Peng and her family are planning to file lawsuits against the police for their breaking in, confiscation of personnel belongings, and residential surveillance.
