(Minghui.org) Two men in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, have been detained for two months for their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. The authorities also denied them family visits, despite repeated requests from their loved ones.
When Mr. Chen Xinye got to the restaurant where his wife Ms. Chen Lihui worked at around 8:20 p.m. on July 22, 2021, to take her home, nearly 30 plainclothes officers stormed in and forced the customers to leave. When Mr. Liu Xianyong, a customer who also practices Falun Gong, tried to resist, the police pushed him down and handcuffed him. The police had apparently followed Mr. Liu to the restaurant in order to arrest him and other practitioners.
The police handcuffed Mr. Liu, Mr. Chen, Ms. Chen, and the 11 other restaurant employees and forced them to half squat while searching the restaurant. Some of the employees complained, “I’d rather kneel. I can’t bear this position any more!”
Not finding anything related to Falun Gong, the police dismantled all the surveillance cameras in the restaurant. At around 10 p.m., they put black hoods on all 14 people, put them in the police van, and made them squat in the back.
Eight plainclothes officers ransacked the Chen couple’s home and confiscated their Falun Gong books, photo of Falun Gong’s founder, computer, and cellphone. When their daughter asked the police where her parents were, no one answered her.
When the restaurant employees didn’t return home, some of their family members went to the restaurant to look for them. One employee’s relative tracked her cellphone location and saw that she was in a hotel in Faku County. After being interrogated overnight, the 11 employees were released the next day. Mr. Liu, Mr. Chen, and Ms. Chen were not.
On the evening of July 23, a Xindong Police Station officer informed the Chen couple’s daughter that her mother was under house arrest but refused to tell her where her mother was being held. The police refused to divulge any information about Mr. Chen except to say that details about his case would be available on July 28.
When the daughter called the police on July 28, she was directed to the Dadong Police Department. On July 29, the Dadong Domestic Security Office called the daughter and told her to bring daily necessities for her parents to the Dadong Police Department, but they still refused to say where the couple was being detained or who was in charge of their case.
Over the next three weeks, the couple’s daughter, in her 20s, went to 16 government agencies, including several police stations, police departments, detention centers, Domestic Security Office, Political and Legal Affairs Committee, the local government office, appeals office, and the procuratorate, to look for her parents, only to be told that their case was confidential and she should just go home and wait for the update.
On August 21, Ms. Chen was released, after being fined 5,000 yuan.
Mr. Chen and Mr. Liu remain in custody. Mr. Liu’s elderly mother went to the Faku County Detention Center to demand his release but to no avail.
This isn’t the first time that Mr. Chen and his wife have been targeted for their faith. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when their daughter was 8, the police arrested them in front of the little girl. She was so terrified that she shook uncontrollably. Mr. Chen was later sentenced to four years. Shortly after he was released in 2012, he found a job as the sales manager of a precision instrument company, only to be arrested while on a business trip to nearby Dandong City. He was tortured and later sentenced to another four years in prison. After he was released, he and his wife’s elderly parents, in their 80s, moved in to live with them. Their arrests and detention have caused their parents great distress.
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