(Minghui.org) Ms. Zhang Qiaolei’s daughter and two sisters were twice arrested for their efforts to seek her release from an unjust incarceration. Ms. Zhang is facing a prison sentence for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body cultivation practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999. While one sister was later released, Ms. Zhang’s daughter and her other sister are now facing prosecution after their arrests were approved.
Ms. Zhang, a widow in Tonghua County, Jilin Province, was first arrested on February 27, 2020 for putting up informational posters about Falun Gong. Although she was released on bail shortly after, the police took her back into custody on December 9 and she has been held at the Changliu Detention Center since.
In the weeks after Ms. Zhang’s second arrest, her daughter, Ms. Wang Meiqi, and her two sisters, Ms. Zhang Qiaoyun and Ms. Zhang Qiaoxiu, went to various government agencies to seek her release.
When the three women went to the Tonghua County Police Station to pick up Ms. Zhang’s approval of arrest on December 21, at the request of police officer Zhu Wenxin, the police arrested them under the pretext that they were “disrupting social order.”
Ms. Wang and Ms. Zhang Qiaoxiu were both given 15 days of detention and Ms. Zhang Qiaoyun was given 13 days of detention.
As Ms. Wang, a college senior, was scheduled to take the graduate school entrance exam between December 26 and 27, she had to request special permission to take the exams and then return to finish serving the detention.
After she was released, Ms. Wang continued her efforts to seek justice for her mother. Between February 19 and 20, 2021, she submitted two letters requesting her mother’s release. The letters were sent to the Liuhe County Procuratorate, Liuhe County Court, the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Department of Tonghua City Procuratorate, Tonghua City Procuratorate Reporting Center, as well as to Zhang Wei, Secretary of the Disciplinary Committee of Tonghua County, Ma Tao, head of the Public Security Discipline Inspection and Supervision Team of Tonghua City, Liu Yufeng, Director of the Standing Committee of Tonghua County People’s Congress and Li Min, Director of the Women’s Federation of the Tonghua County Government.
On February 21, Ms. Wang and her aunts also filed a complaint against Li Zongyuan, prosecutor for the Tonghua County Procuratorate, for violating legal procedure in prosecuting her mother.
Ms. Wang intended to represent her mother as a non-lawyer defender, but the court derailed that effort, announcing that they would change the court date from the scheduled March 16 date, to an unspecified new date. When Ms. Wang went to the court on the initially scheduled court date, she heard her mother’s voice while passing by a courtroom. She knew then that the court had never changed the court date. She asked to go in but was blocked outside. She stayed outside and heard her mother defending herself and then someone announcing that she was sentenced to 7.5 years with a fine of 10,000 yuan.
Directed by Xu Yan, head of the Tonghua County Domestic Security Office, a group of officers arrested Ms. Wang at her dorm at Jilin Normal University on the evening of April 19 and brought her to the Tonghua County Police Department. Her dorm room was also ransacked.
The next morning, her two aunts were arrested as soon as they left home.
Both sisters and Ms. Wang were interrogated by officers from the Liuhe County Police Department about the details of their complaints against the relevant agencies in persecuting Ms. Zhang Qiaolei.
While Ms. Zhang Qiaoyun was released on the afternoon of April 20, Ms. Zhang Qiaoxiu and Ms. Wang have been kept in custody. They are also facing prosecution now after their arrests were approved by the Liuhe County Procuratorate on May 26.
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