(Minghui.org) A Jinchan City, Gansu Province resident was harassed and threatened with job termination multiple times in July 2020 by local police and security personnel at her workplace, who attempted to force her to renounce her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that has been persecuted in China since 1999. 

Ms. Ma Yongyan works at the power plant of Jinchuan Group. Officers from the Guilinlu Police Station broke into her home on August 2, 2020 and arrested her. Her residence was ransacked. Ms. Ma was interrogated for two days followed by a 15-day detention. 

Several days after she was released, an officer from the Guilinlu Police Station and several security personnel from her company tried several times to force the 52-year-old engineer to sign statements to renounce Falun Gong. As she refused to abandon her belief, she has only been allowed to do janitorial work in the power plant and she has been under constant surveillance since then. 

Before the most recent persecution, Ms. Ma was arrested multiple times and detained for a total of 288 days. She was denied promotion and bonuses at work because of her faith, which has caused her an estimated 180,000 yuan in monetary loss. In addition, the authorities frequently monitored and terrorized her. 

Family Suffers Amidst the Persecution

Ms. Ma took up Falun Gong in 1996 and the practice helped cure her chronic fatigue and dizziness. She became healthy and energetic. After the persecution started, both she and her family became targets of the government's persecution. 

Three officers from the Guanzhoulu Police Station broke into Ms. Ma’s home around midnight on September 3, 2001. They arrested her and her husband, a non-practitioner, and left their 6-year-old son behind. The police came back to ransack their home at 3 o'clock in the morning. 

Although the police soon released Ms. Ma, they secretly followed and monitored her. They arrested her again a few days later in front of her elderly mother, who passed out due to extreme fear. 

Ms. Ma was held in the Jinchang City Detention Center, where she was brutally beaten and threatened with imprisonment and job termination if she didn’t renounce her faith. As a result of the beating, her face was swollen and her ears bled. Her mother and husband borrowed 10,000 yuan to pay the police and bail her out a month later. 

Promotion and Bonuses Canceled

Starting in 2002, the management at the power plant stopped considering Ms. Ma for promotion due to her steadfast faith in Falun Gong. In 2005, she was moved to the maintenance department and her salary was reduced because the management found out that she had quit the Chinese Communist Party. 

After working for more than 20 years, she was still paid the same salary as a new hire. For a long time, she received the lowest bonus in the entire department and was not allowed to take days off. 

Repeated Arrests and Detention

Agents from the Gansu City 610 Office, an extralegal agency created to persecute Falun Gong, and local police officers arrested Ms. Ma on October 31, 2007. Days before her arrest, the authorities wiretapped and monitored her phone. She was detained for 228 days after this arrest.

On September 26, 2012, agents from the Domestic Security Office and police officers arrested Ms. Ma while she was at work. They threatened her with not allowing her son to take the college entrance exam. She was released 30 days later. After she resumed work, her supervisor punished her by taking away her performance pay and other bonuses. Not wanting to get bad reviews for employing a Falun Gong practitioner, her employer pushed her to quit her job. 

Ms. Ma filed a complaint with the Supreme Procuratorate in 2015 against former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who launched the persecution. In retaliation, she was arrested and interrogated in July. Under pressure from the authorities, her employer also canceled her performance pay of 1,300 yuan and issued a warning to her in early 2017. 

Her supervisor threatened to fire her if she told anyone about the warning or the persecution. “The police know everything you are doing,” a company official said to her. 

Ms. Ma was arrested and interrogated on March 14, 2017 after the police found an article published on Minghui.org detailing the persecution she'd experienced.

Related report in Chinese:

累遭迫害经济损失18万工程师马咏雁控告江泽民