Three Heilongjiang Residents, Including a Married Couple, Given Heavy Terms for Their Faith

(Minghui.org) Three Hailin City, Heilongjiang Province residents, including a married couple, were sentenced to heavy terms for their faith in Falun Gong. All three have appealed the verdicts.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

The three practitioners, including Ms. Fu Zhaocui, Mr. Guo Libin and his wife Ms. Chen Xitao, were arrested on June 10, 2021, by officers of the Hailin City Domestic Security Office. 

While the couple was kept in custody, Ms. Fu was rejected admission by the local detention center and released on bail. Before she was let go, she was interrogated by officers Ding Yuhua, Zhang and Pan Ming for three hours. She refused to answer any questions. The police arrested Ms. Fu again on July 10 and took her to the Hailin City Procuratorate, which approved her arrest. She was released on bail again on the same day. 

The police submitted the practitioners’ case to the Hailin City Procuratorate on September 16. They were indicted by prosecutor Ma Yongxin around October 18. Judge Jiang Xinkun of the Hailin City Court was assigned to handle their case.

The court initially scheduled a hearing for December 16, but later postponed it to December 23. Ms. Fu was sentenced to 9.5 years with 10,000 yuan fine. Mr. Guo and Ms. Chen were each given 6.5 years with 5,000 yuan fine. Ms. Fu is still placed on residential surveillance at the time of writing.

Two weeks before her latest arrest, on May 28, Ms. Fu was harassed at home by three officers. They initially videotaped the harassment, but later turned off the camera at Ms. Fu’s request. 

Officer Wang Yuntang said to her they had reported to the above that Ms. Fu and her family had stopped practicing Falun Gong, in order to meet the target of transforming a certain number of local Falun Gong practitioners. He demanded that Ms. Fu cooperate with them and promise that she would no longer practice Falun Gong. Ms. Fu responded that it’s his own business how he would report the situation, but there is no way for her to make any promise to them about her own spiritual belief. 

The police then left, only to arrest her three weeks later on June 10. 

Past Persecution

Ms. Fu, her parents and younger brother began to practice Falun Gong in 1997. Her father, who had just lost his job and become depressed, took on a positive attitude about life. He stopped playing Mahjong and drinking and was hopeful again. Ms. Fu and her mother, on the other hand, credit Falun Gong for curing their many ailments, especially Ms. Fu’s own rheumatism, gastritis, and skin allergy. 

After the persecution began in 1999, the four members of her family were all sentenced for upholding their faith. His father struggled to recover from torture in Mudanjiang Prison and passed away on May 22, 2007.

The other two practitioners, Mr. Guo and Ms. Chen are farmers. They were still doing farm work when being arrested on June 10, 2021. The couple’s arrests left their elderly father in his 80s and son in his 20s in deep distress. 

In the past few years, the police constantly harassed the couple, especially during the busy farming season, causing a tremendous financial loss for them. The persecution also caused their son to give up the pursuit to be an artist. 

One night in the summer of 2017, a group of plainclothes officers broke into the couple’s home and attempted to arrest Mr. Guo. Upon finding that he wasn’t home, the police attempted to arrest his son. When the son resisted, the police confiscated his cellphone. The harassment traumatized the young man so much that he would become very nervous even when hearing people walking near their home.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Duan Peng (段鹏), prosecutor of Hailin City Procuratorate: [phone], [phone]Ding Yuhua (丁玉华), head of Hailin City Domestic Security Office: [phone], [phone], [phone]Kong Liying (孔丽颖), officer of Hailin City Domestic Security Office: [phone], [phone]

(More perpetrators’ contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)

Related report:

Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province: 28 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested in One Day