Gansu Woman Sentenced to Four Years for Using Paper Currency with Messages about Falun Gong Printed on the Bills

(Minghui.org) A woman in Huining County, Gansu Province, was recently sentenced to four years for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Jia Shujuan, 53, was arrested on November 1, 2019, by Zhang Xiaoping of the Huining County Domestic Security Office and officers of the Guocheng Town Police Station. Her Falun Gong books, informational DVDs, computer, and paper money with short messages about Falun Gong printed on the bills were confiscated. The police also attempted to arrest her son but didn’t succeed.

Ms. Jia owns a grocery store and buys her produce directly from farmers. The police arrested her after she was reported for paying the farmers with banknotes that had short messages about Falun Gong printed on them.

Due to strict information censorship in China, Falun Gong practitioners use all kinds of creative ways to raise awareness about the persecution, including printing information on paper currency.

Ms. Jia’s family recently learned that she’d been sentenced to four years and has been taken to the Gansu Province Women’s Prison.

Past Persecution

Ms. Jia took up Falun Gong in June 1998. She credits the practice for curing her headaches, cataracts, and other ailments. While her husband runs a welding shop, she has a grocery shop and also grows crops. They have three children. Although they weren’t wealthy, they were very happy.

The persecution that began in July 1999, however, completely destroyed Ms. Jia’s peaceful life. The police kept harassing her and ordered her to renounce Falun Gong and turn in her Falun Gong books.

In April 2002, Ms. Jia was arrested for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong in a village. Her Falun Gong books and materials were confiscated. The police first held her in the Jingyuan Detention Center and then gave her an unknown term at the Ping’antai Forced Labor Camp.

In the labor camp, the guards often beat Ms. Jia and deprived her of sleep. She was also forced to do intensive unpaid labor, including removing grass or digging out tree roots, yet she was only given watery soup to eat and often starved.

Later she was transferred to the team specifically set up to “transform” Falun Gong practitioners. She was monitored by the inmates around the clock and beaten and verbally abused if she was found doing the Falun Gong exercises. The inmates often kicked her, stomped on her, and slapped her in the face.

Ms. Jia was arrested again on April 29, 2008. The police handcuffed her to a chair during the day and then handcuffed her behind her back in the evening at the Xinbaozi Police Station. Every half an hour, a different officer came to interrogate her. A day later, she was taken to the Huining County Police Department, where she was interrogated for another day. After that, the police held her at the Huining County Detention Center for 40 days and continued to interrogate her there.

Ms. Jia was later taken to the Jingtai Detention Center and held there for a year before being sentenced to three years in Gansu Province Women’s Prison. The guards and inmates tortured her for upholding Falun Gong, including handcuffing her to a chair, forcing her to stand for long hours, depriving her of sleep and restroom use, and forcing her to work without pay. In addition to the physical abuse, she was also forced to watch propaganda videos slandering Falun Gong and pressured to denounce the practice.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Zhang Xiaoping (张小平), officer, Huining County Domestic Security Office: [phone]Zhang Xucai (张旭彩), officer, Huining County Domestic Security Office: [phone]Chen Yang (陈杨), officer, Guocheng Town Police Station: [phone]

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