(Minghui.org) A hotel owner in Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province was arrested on March 5, 2020, for distributing informational materials about her faith in Falun Gong. She is currently held at Youhao District Detention Center.
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.
This isn’t the first time that Ms. Zhang Shuqin, 69, has been persecuted for her faith.
In 2001, she was sentenced to eight years in Heilongjiang Women’s Prison for speaking out for Falun Gong. The guards exempted inmates who actively persecuted Falun Gong practitioners from doing the required labor. As a result, many inmates beat and verbally abused Ms. Zhang and other imprisoned practitioners, or even applied torture instruments to them.
One inmate once said, “It’s no big deal for us to beat you!”
Because Ms. Zhang filed a complaint after being abused by the inmates, the guards hung her up by the wrists and beat her.
In the prison, no rights of Falun Gong practitioners were protected. In addition to the beating and cursing, the guards and inmates also humiliated them, such as denying them the use of the restroom and forcing them to relieve themselves in their pants, or not providing them with toilet paper or sanitary pads when they had menstrual periods.
Barely surviving the eight hellish years, Ms. Zhang was determined to raise awareness about the persecution after she was released.
She often went to the street to talk to people or pass out informational materials about Falun Gong. Because she was found carrying Falun Gong materials while going through a security check at a bus station, she was reported to the police and arrested again.
She was later given two years of forced labor and served time at Harbin Drug Rehabilitation Center.
