(Minghui.org) Four Jingzhou City, Hubei Province residents were arrested on April 14, 2021 after being reported for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
After going through interrogation and 14 days of quarantine, Ms. Qiu Yunfeng, Mr. Wang Meiqing, Mr. Liu Xin’an and Ms. Deng Yongmei have been put on criminal detention and taken to the Dangyang City No.1 Detention Center.
Prior to their latest arrests, both Ms. Qiu and Mr. Wang have suffered repeated persecution in the past 22 years for their faith.
Ms. Qiu, 62, was arrested at Tiananmen Square on August 4, 2002 when she went there to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. The police shocked her with several electric batons and caused the bone in her right wrist to be exposed. She was later taken to the Chongwen Detention Center in Beijing. She held a hunger strike to protest the persecution.
While staying at her child’s home in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, Ms. Qiu was arrested on August 8, 2008 for distributing Falun Gong materials. She was held at the Shenzhen City Detention Center for 141 days and then at the Sanshui Women’s Forced Labor Camp for 30 days, before being released for having dangerously high blood pressure.
On June 13, 2009, she was arrested again in Shenzhen for visiting a Falun Gong practitioner who had just been released from a brainwashing center. This time, Ms. Qiu was held at the Futian Detention Center for over 270 days and released after having high blood pressure.
Ms. Qiu was arrested one more time on June 9, 2015 for distributing Falun Gong materials in Jingzhou. She was released on June 16 after being rejected admission by the local detention center for having dangerously high blood pressure.
Mr. Wang was arrested on May 20, 2003 and held at the Ximen Detention Center. The guards force fed him after he held a hunger strike to protest the persecution and caused him to go into shock.
Mr. Wang stood in the hallway and exposed the guards’ brutality after waking up. In retaliation, the guards forced him to wear shackles. When releasing him on bail 35 days later, the guards refused to return the 2,200 yuan confiscated from him.
The authorities attempted to arrest Mr. Wang again and took him to the local brainwashing center on September 8, 2004, but he managed to escape. The police broke into his home and ransacked the place. They also ordered his neighbors to closely monitor whether he came back. His wife was intimidated and their child was harassed at school. Mr. Wang returned home after going from place to place for over a month.
Four months later, on February 27, 2005, the police arrested Mr. Wang at home and took him to the Yangxunhu Brainwashing Center in Wuhan City, the capital of Hubei. He was released 40 days later.
Mr. Wang was arrested again on September 20, 2017 and held in custody for a day.
In addition to the persecution he suffered, his wife has been arrested three times and served one year in labor camp for practicing Falun Gong.