(Minghui.org) Four Qingdao City, Shandong Province, residents were sentenced to prison in March 2022 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Jiang Jixing was sentenced to more than three years, Ms. Dou Weili to over two years, Ms. Sun Jianhua to over one year, and Ms. Li Shufen to eleven months. The four practitioners were arrested on April 18, 2021, while studying the Falun Gong teachings together. Ms. Li has been released at the time of writing after serving her term. Other details about their cases aren’t yet known.
Past Persecution of Ms. Dou Weili
Ms. Dou, a 51-year-old accountant, took up Falun Gong in July 1997. After the persecution began in 1999, she wrote a letter to the central government to clarify the facts about Falun Gong, only to be arrested and held in a brainwashing center.
When Ms. Dou’s mother, also a Falun Gong practitioner, went to Beijing to visit a relative in January 2001, she brought along some Falun Gong informational materials. The materials were discovered by the street committee, resulting in the arrests of Ms. Dou’s mother and the relative. Both of them were held at the police station for a day. Her mother, then 61, was taken back to Qingdao and detained for 15 days. The police forced Ms. Dou to write a statement to renounce Falun Gong on her mother’s behalf as a condition for her release.
Ms. Dou was arrested again on March 8, 2002, in front of her four-year-old son, after she was reported by a neighbor for a gathering with other practitioners. Her son was terrified of the police and said to them, “You are all bad people.” Ms. Dou was held in a brainwashing center for 52 days, during which time she was constantly threatened and forced to watch videos that slandered Falun Gong.
In addition to Ms. Dou and her mother, her husband, who doesn’t practice Falun Gong and worked in the same company as Ms. Dou, was also implicated due to the persecution.
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