(Minghui.org) Two Xuyong County, Sichuan Province residents were arrested twice between March and May 2020 for their faith in Falun Gong. Both Ms. Fu Qingming and Ms. Wang Manqun were placed under house arrest following their second detention. Ms. Fu was taken back into custody in late October, and the situation of Ms. Wang isn’t clear after she was harassed in mid-October.
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. Fu, Ms. Wang, and Ms. Zhang Yayun were arrested at 10:00 a.m. on March 13, 2020 for talking to people about Falun Gong in a park. The police searched their purses, confiscated the Falun Gong materials they had, and asked for their names, ID numbers, and addresses. The officers refused to provide them lunch, even after the three elderly women complained of being hungry and feeling dizzy-headed. The practitioners were released at around 3:00 p.m. on the same day.
Ms. Fu and Ms. Wang were both arrested again on May 22 in a residential area. The head of the local police station, He Chi, said to them, “I’m not as nice as my colleague, who released you in March due to your advanced age. I will take much tougher measures against you.” The two practitioners were later released and put under house arrest.
Both practitioners were informed in July by their residential committees to report to the local Procuratorate, but they refused to go.
Ms. Wang’s son was forced by the police on October 13 to call his mother and ask her to open the door for staff members from the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (an extra-judiciary agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong). After Ms. Wang let these officers in, one of them in a police uniform took photos and videotaped her. She told them how she had benefitted from practicing Falun Gong and why she has to raise awareness about the persecution. The officers didn’t mention anything about her subpoena to the Procuratorate and then left.
Ms. Fu was arrested at home on October 30. She is now being detained in the Hejiang Detention Center in Luzhou City after the Xinjin Brainwashing Center in Chengdu refused to accept her.
Prior to her latest persecution, Ms. Fu, a retired cement factory worker, had been sentenced to three years in 2012 and harassed in 2015 for filing a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party, for ordering the persecution. In 2019, she was ordered to pay back tens of thousands of yuan of retirement fund that she received during her imprisonment.
Ms. Wang, a retired sugar and cigarette sales manager in her 70s, was given two prison terms, in 2006 and 2014, for a total of 7.5 years. She was deprived of more than 100,000 yuan in her pension due to the imprisonment.
Elderly Woman Twice Imprisoned and Has Pension Suspended for Upholding Her Faith