(Minghui.org) Two Jinan City, Shandong Province residents, were arrested on July 25, 2022, for practicing Falun Gong. While Ms. Zhou Dongdong has been released after 37 days of detention, Ms. Cheng Shuxiang is still held at the Jinan City Detention Center.
Ms. Zhou’s son and another practitioner, Ms. Wang, were also arrested on the same day. Ms. Zhou’s son was released a day later. It’s not clear whether he practices Falun Gong or not.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Cheng, 60, used to work as the director of the Quality Control Department of Hongjitang Pharmaceutical Company. Because of raising awareness about the persecution of Falun Gong, she was given two years of forced labor in 2001 and sentenced to four years in 2007. She was given another one-year prison term on January 13, 2015, by the Changqing District Court.
Ms. Cheng was arrested again on September 26, 2017, and had her home ransacked. After one year and nine months at the Jinan City Detention Center, she was sentenced to three and a half years on June 11, 2019, by the Huaiyin District Court. She was released from the Shandong Province Women’s Prison in March 2021, only to be arrested 17 months later.
Ms. Zhou, 61, was the discipline director of the Shandong Border Guard Corps. Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong, she was demoted and later discharged from the service.
Ms. Zhou was arrested on April 1, 2017, after being reported for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong. The Lixia District Court sentenced her to two years on August 25, 2017.
While serving time at the Shandong Province Women’s Prison, the inmates constantly beat and verbally abused her. Her finger was snapped and her wrists broken after being hit against a table. She had become hunch-backed and disfigured, with both arms disabled, by the time she was released on March 31, 2019.