Shop Owner Harassed for Upholding Faith That Saved His Life

(Minghui.org) A shop owner in Gong’an County, Hubei Province has been harassed several times over the past year for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Led by Chen Yang, instructor of the Jiazhuyuan Town Police Station, a group of officers broke into Mr. Zhang Guoliang’s small shop on December 14, 2021 and took him to the police station under the pretext of needing to ask him a few questions. 

The police later took Mr. Zhang to a local detention facility, only to be told that he wasn’t qualified for admission due to high blood pressure. With strong pressure from his family demanding his release, the police placed Mr. Zhang under house arrest and released him at around 9 p.m.

After the regime launched the “Zero-out” campaign in 2020 in an attempt to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith, the local police have harassed Mr. Zhang, 44, and his wife on multiple occasions. They promised that as long as the couple signed a statement to renounce Falun Gong, their names would be removed from the blacklist. Mr. Zhang refused to comply and told the police that it’s not possible for him to give up practicing Falun Gong. The last harassment, prior to his arrest in December, was on April 25, 2021 by four officers from the Jiazhuyuan Town Police Station.

Mr. Zhang said that while he was serving in the military in 1996 when he was 19, he suffered severe food poisoning and had a severe kidney condition. He’d tried various treatments, but to no avail. Three months after he began practicing Falun Gong, he completely recovered. After he retired from the military in 1997, he got married and had a healthy baby girl.

After the communist regime ordered the persecution, Mr. Zhang was sentenced to 3.5 years in July 2002. He endured torture at the Qinduankou Prison. The guards subjected Mr. Zhang to constant comprehensive physical examinations and also took a large amount of blood samples, which he suspected to be screening for matching organs in the regime’s organ harvesting crimes.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Chen Yang (陈扬), officer, Jiazhuyuan Town Police Station: [phone]Chen Wanlin (陈万林), secretary, Gong’an County Political and Legal Affairs Committee: [phone]Xiang Xiaoyang (向晓阳), director, Gong’an County Domestic Security Office: [phone], [phone]Xie Feng (谢峰), head of Gong’an County 610 Office: [phone]Tan Bin (覃斌), deputy head of the Gong’an County Police Department: [phone], [phone]

(More perpetrators’ contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)

Related report:

I Regained My Health After Practicing Falun Gong, But Was Sent to Prison and Tortured for It