(Minghui.org) A 60-year-old Anqing City, Anhui Province resident was taken back into custody on August 25, 2021 to serve a 1.5-year prison term for her faith in Falun Gong. The authorities denied Ms. Shu Yulan family visits and forbade her loved ones from sending in daily necessitates or clothes for her, citing the pandemic as an excuse.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Shu and her older sister, Ms. Shu Yulian, a 69-year-old Hefei City resident of Anhui, were reported on May 2, 2020 for talking to people about Falun Gong on the street in Anqing. The police followed them to their younger brother’s home, also in Anqing, and arrested them.
The police ransacked the brother’s residence and confiscated 92,000 yuan, which Ms. Shu Yulan had kept there. After taking both the sisters and their sister-in-law, who doesn’t practice Falun Gong, to the Dananmen Police Station, the police also ransacked Ms. Shu Yulan’s home.
The police attempted to send the sisters to the Anqing Detention Center on the next evening, only to have their admissions rejected due to high blood pressure. When releasing the sisters, the police forced them to wear ankle monitors and ordered them to report to the police station every day for a month.
Ms. Shu Yulan returned to the police station in August and demanded the return of her savings of 92,000 yuan, as the money was meant to help cover the medical bills incurred by her son, who had just been hospitalized. But the police refused.
Zhan Wei, deputy director of the Dananmen Police Station, called Ms. Shu Yulan and asked her to come to the police station on September 30, 2020. Ms. Shu went there, thinking that the police might return her money. Instead, Zhan asked her how many materials she had distributed. Ms. Shu clarified the facts about Falun Gong and refused to sign any case documents. She returned home at around 5:00 p.m.
Zhan and two officers drove to Ms. Shu Yulian’s home in Hefei (about 110 miles from Anqing) on October 16, and asked her how many materials she had distributed. The interrogation caused tremendous mental pressure for Ms. Shu and caused her blood pressure to become dangerously high. The police stayed at her home for over two hours, and despite her becoming very dizzy, they forced her to sign the interrogation record.
The police submitted the two sisters’ case to the Taihu County Procuratorate in November 2020. They were soon indicted and had their cases forwarded to the Taihu County Court.
The two sisters stood trial on March 16, 2021. Ms. Shu Yulan was sentenced to 1.5 years and Ms. Shu Yulian to one year of probation.
Ms. Shu Yulan was taken back into custody after the trial. After the detention center refused to accept her again due to her high blood pressure, the police released her in the evening. She appealed the verdict, but judge Zhang Yingte of Taihu Court summoned her to the police station in early May 2021 and announced there that they’d decided to uphold her original verdict.
The police officer Zhan Wei called Ms. Shu again on July 22 and asked her to come to the police station for an evaluation of whether she could serve time outside of prison. She went there, only to be told that she wasn’t qualified to serve time outside of prison. She was taken straight to the Anqing Detention Center on the same day, despite her high blood pressure.
Prior to the latest episode of persecution, Ms. Shu had been forced to live away from home with her mentally disabled son for seven years, to avoid the persecution.
She said that practicing Falun Gong cured her many ailments. More importantly, when she lost all hope in her life, Falun Gong gave her strength to take care of her son and her incapacitated mother-in-law for nearly ten years.
Related reports:
Two Sisters Sentenced for Practicing Falun Gong—One Has Nearly 100K Yuan Confiscated
Two Innocent Women from Anqing City, Anhui Province, Interrogated in Detention Center
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Category: Accounts of Persecution
