(Minghui.org) A married couple in Jieyang City, Guangdong Province has been detained for five months for their faith in Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Mr. Huang Jianmin and his wife, Ms. Peng Wenjian, were arrested at home on September 11, 2019. Their Falun Gong books and some banknotes printed with information about Falun Gong were confiscated.

Due to strict information censorship in China, Falun Gong practitioners in China are using creative ways to spread words about the persecution of their faith, including printing messages on banknotes.

To collect more “evidence” to charge the couple, the police searched their home three more times between September 11 and 16. They even pried open the floor and ceiling to check whether things had been hidden there. 

During one home raid, the police found a receipt issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and Supreme People’s Court in 2015, acknowledging Mr. Huang and Ms. Peng’s submission of a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime who ordered the persecution in 1999. It’s reported that the police are planning to include the receipt in the prosecution evidence against the couple.

The couple was transferred from Rongcheng District Drug Rehab Center to Jieyang City Detention Center on September 17, 2019, and have been held there since.

Past Persecution

Mr. Huang, in his 50s, credits Falun Gong for curing his severe and incurable medical condition. After regaining his health, he opened a convenience store with his wife, bought a new house and supported their two children to go to school.

With the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, he was repeatedly arrested and harassed for holding fast to his faith. 

He was arrested for doing the Falun Gong exercises outdoor on June 25, 2000, and given more than a year at Sanshui Forced Labor Camp. 

He was arrested again shortly after being released in late 2001, for refusing to verbally abuse Falun Gong and its founder, as ordered by Zhang Youcai, the agent of the local 610 Office, an extralegal agency created to persecute Falun Gong.

From then on, the authorities often harassed Mr. Huang during major events and holidays. 

In January 2006, a local Falun Gong practitioner bought a bag of rice from him and asked him to deliver the rice to her. The 610 Office agents that were monitoring his phone thought it was a code for Falun Gong related materials, so they arrested Mr. Huang, searched his home and held him at Dongshan Detention Center for two months.

The police arrested him again on May 19, 2006, and kept him at Sanshui Brainwashing Center until September 5, 2006. They also required him to report to them every two weeks.

The police harassed him again during the “Knocking on the Door” campaign in 2017.