(Minghui.org) Growing up witnessing the repeated arrests and harassment of her father for practicing Falun Gong, Ms. Dong Ke suffers from severe depression and has been hospitalized several times. Her condition worsened after her mother was forced to divorce her father due to social pressure.
After Mr. Dong Weixing, 54, was arrested again on October 10, 2020, the young woman in her early 20s had a difficult time taking care of herself. In January 2021, she took an overdose of the tranquilizer she had been taking every day and was in a coma for several days. Her teeth turned black. Now the young woman is facing an even more dire prospect after her father was sentenced to 1.5 years for upholding his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Dong, a teacher in Yitong County, Jilin Province, was seized at work on October 10 and held in the Yitong County Detention Center. The police submitted the criminal complaint he filed against Jiang Zemin in 2015 as evidence against him. Jiang, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party, ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. Mr. Dong’s criminal complaint was a part of a tidal wave of legal complaints seeking to bring Jiang to justice.
As part of the “Zero-out” harassment campaign aimed to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith, the authorities found Mr. Dong in the detention center in December 2020 and tried to pressure him into signing a prepared statement denouncing his practice. But he refused to comply.
Mr. Dong stood trial in the Yitong County Court on March 19, 2021. It was recently confirmed by Minghui.org that the judge has sentenced him to 1.5 years.
Prior to Mr. Dong's latest arrest, he had been repeatedly targeted for his faith in Falun Gong. He was arrested on March 12, 2002, and beaten by agents from the Yitong County Police Department and later guards at the Yitong County Detention Center. He was later taken to Weizigou Forced Labor Camp. He was held there from May 14, 2002, to November 30, 2002, and brutally tortured. After he filed his criminal complaint against Jiang in 2015, he was arrested on December 15 of that year and detained for 10 days.