Authorities Go to Extreme Lengths to Try to Force Retired Teacher to Renounce Falun Dafa

(Minghui.org) The police and school authorities in Chongqing started harassing a retired teacher because she remained a steadfast practitioner of Falun Dafa. They arrested and put Ms. Zeng Qingbi in detention centers three times. The harassment escalated in 2020 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide “Zero-out” campaign aimed to force every Falun Dafa practitioner on the government's blacklists to renounce their faith.

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a meditation practice that teaches Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. It has been taught in China since 1992. In July 1999, then CCP leader Jiang Zemin started to persecute the practice. Practitioners in China have suffered unspeakable torture and harassment over the past 22 years.

According to official policy in Chongqing, the authorities in areas with six or fewer practitioners were ordered to force them all to renounce their faith in the latest zero-out campaign. If the goal wasn’t met, their salaries would be reduced by up to 3 percent.

Ms. Zeng used to work in the Experimental Middle School in the Wulong District. The District Education Committee and school leadership each formed a special task force in charge of “transforming” Ms. Zeng. The school principal said in a faculty meeting that if Ms. Zeng refused to sign statements to renounce her faith, 3,000 yuan would be deducted from everyone’s salary. Some of the teachers and staff members came from the same families and thus risked having double, triple, or even quadruple salary reductions.

Even the place where Ms. Zeng’s niece works, a government agency identified in the authorities’ database, was also ordered to participate in the campaign to “transform” Ms. Zeng.

Since September 2020, officials from the school, the city government, the community, and the police have harassed Ms. Zeng 15 times. Some people who had practiced Falun Gong before but later gave up were hired as “experts” to try to brainwash Ms. Zeng.

Beginning in October 2020, the school forced all the teachers to participate, especially Chinese Communist Party members. Every Wednesday morning beginning at 9:30 a.m., they brainwashed Ms. Zeng in a meeting room.

In the afternoon, another team of school security personnel and officials with the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (an extra-judiciary agency tasked with persecuting Falun Gong) harassed her at home.

Sometimes they stayed at her home in an attempt to brainwash her. Her niece was ordered to take two days off in September 2020 and stay with Ms. Zeng to monitor her.

By the end of 2020, the other teachers decided to take an extreme measure to force Ms. Zeng to renounce her faith. On December 9, two teachers grabbed her arms while the others forced her to fingerprint a piece of paper with her name on it. They later filled in the paper with statements saying that she wished to renounce her faith.