(Minghui.org) Having endured several arrests and with the husband almost dying from torture in prison, an elderly couple in Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province, was harassed again for their faith in Falun Gong on July 11, 2022.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Eighteen plainclothes officers showed up at Ms. Xin Shurong and Mr. Sun Rongxiao’s home at 7: 20 a.m. on July 11. Two of them held Mr. Sun while the others searched the place, taking away over 40 of their Falun Gong books, a photo of Falun Gong’s founder, three computers, two printers, seven packs of printing paper, two paper cutters, and some cartridges.
The police manhandled Mr. Sun, 68, to the police car. When Ms. Xin, who had fallen and severely injured herself just days before in the shower, tried to stop them, they shoved her. The police were going to arrest her, too, but then relented. They hung around for another 12 hours, asking her where she got the Falun Gong materials and office supplies.
Mr. Sun was released that evening. Both he and his wife were put under residential surveillance for six months.
Past Persecution
Since the onset of the persecution in 1999, the couple has been targeted several times.
They were first arrested on June 14, 2002, and had their home ransacked. Mr. Sun was interrogated for days. Knowing that Falun Gong practitioners don’t smoke, the officers smoked cigarettes and blew the smoke at him. They also starved him and deprived him of sleep.
While Ms. Xin was later released due to her medical conditions, Mr. Sun was sentenced to four years in prison. He suffered severe diarrhea and became emaciated in days. Yet the guards still forced him to do intensive labor without pay. He was so weak that he didn’t have the strength to carry a wash basin.
In addition to the physical torture, he was also subjected to intensive brainwashing. The pressure from the guards for him to renounce Falun Gong was intense.
After he barely survived the torture and was released, he was dealt another blow when his relatives all kept away from him for fear of being implicated in the persecution.
When Ms. Xin was out in November 2019, a police car stopped in front of her after someone she had just talked to reported her for promoting Falun Gong.
Torture illustration: Tiger bench
The police tied Ms. Xin to the tiger bench in the police station and asked her where she’d gotten the Falun Gong materials in her purse. She refused to answer. Chief Liu Yazhou kicked her leg, but she still said nothing.
That afternoon, the police took her to the restroom and threatened to hang her up, strip her, pour water over her, and open the window to freeze her. They said that if she died, they would just report her as having committed suicide. One of them pushed her into a corner and stomped on her abdomen. She was held in the detention center for ten days and then released.
Related report in Chinese:
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