Shandong Woman Recounts 3.5 Years of Wrongful Imprisonment for Her Faith

(Minghui.org) A Yantai City, Shandong Province, resident was arrested on April 27, 2019, for practicing Falun Gong and later transferred to the neighboring Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, where she was sentenced to 3.5 years for distributing Falun Gong materials. Ms. Zhang Jinling was released on October 27, 2022, and recounted her ordeal below.

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

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Arrested

I got a call from my family on April 27, 2019, to grab my ID and come outside the home to receive a package. I went outside, only to be held by four plainclothes officers. Without showing their IDs, they snatched my ID and pushed me into their police car. I still don’t know who they were.

The officers handcuffed me, took me to my workplace, and confiscated many of my personal belongings. While I was detained, they also raided my home and I don’t know what they took.

I was taken to the Yantai Detention Center in the evening. Three days later, three officers came from Xuzhou and took me to the Xuzhou Detention Center. They kept me handcuffed for the next ten hours, including the nearly seven hours on the road and another three hours for a physical examination in the hospital. I wasn’t allowed to use the restroom.

Abused in the Detention Center

At the Xuzhou Detention Center, officers Liu Tianzheng and Wang Feng interrogated me. They accused me of undermining law enforcement and attempted to force me to plead guilty.

Because I refused to give in, the guards forced me to stand for two days without sleeping. Another practitioner, Ms. Wang Lanying from Xuzhou was also subjected to sleep deprivation. While she was in a delirious state, guard Wang Rui ordered the detention center doctor to insert thick metal needles into all her fingers and both sides of her neck.

Guards Wang Rui and Wang Houxian used every possible excuse to confiscate money from the detainees’ cash accounts. They also ordered the detainees to buy extra clothing at 100 yuan a set, when the market price was only 10 yuan. Those who refused to buy were forced to squat for hours.

Sentenced to 3.5 Years

During my hearing at the Xuzhou City Court, prosecutor Hou Baichao accused me of distributing Falun Gong materials. I insisted that I hadn’t violated any law by practicing Falun Gong or distributing materials. He asked me if I would keep practicing Falun Gong, and I said “yes.”

Although I had objected the day before to being represented by the two court-appointed lawyers, they still showed up during the hearing and entered a guilty plea for me. I was forced to sign the lawyer-client contract with them, and my family had to pay the legal fees to them. They threatened to extend my detention period or seize our property if my family didn’t pay.

I was sentenced to 3.5 years and fined 10,000 yuan a few months later.

Tortured in Prison

I was taken to the Nanjing Prison after more than a year in the Xuzhou Detention Center. The guards arranged inmate Li Baoyan to monitor me. The monitoring didn’t stop until there were only two months left on my term. They also tried to brainwash me and force me to renounce Falun Gong. I refused to comply, and I was accused of having a mental problem.

Guard Feng Yanli threatened to take my incapacitated mother to the prison to persuade me to renounce my faith. After the 16 inmates in the same cell finished doing the intensive, unpaid labor during the day, the guards didn’t allow them to take a break, but forced them to stay up with me, as a way to incite their hatred towards me and Falun Gong. Another guard, Zhao Lili, forced me to get up early in the morning every day for two weeks and stand for hours before I could do anything else.

Related report:

Shandong Woman Sentenced to 3.5 Years in Neighboring Province for Her Faith