(Minghui.org) A woman in Changle County, Shandong Province, was harassed three times between June and September 2023 for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
In June 2023, a village official and two police officers went to Ms. Yu Shuzhen’s home. She wasn’t there, so they went to the home of a friend of hers. They said they’d noticed the friend had stayed late at Ms. Yu’s home several times recently and they demanded to know whether she was practicing Falun Gong with Ms. Yu. The friend said Ms. Yu had never told her about Falun Gong. The police left.
The village official and police returned on July 11. They said that, if Ms. Yu promised not to practice Falun Gong anymore, they would remove her from their list. When Ms. Yu didn’t respond, the official warned her, “If you are still on the list, we can arrest you at any time and we will find you even if you try to hide.” She still said nothing.
One of the police officers asked the village official, “Have you called her son?” “Yes, I did, but no one answered. I left a message on his WeChat account, but haven’t heard back.” The officer said, “If her son stands with her, we will arrest him, too.”
Ms. Yu returned home from running an errand on September 30 to see the village official standing outside his door (the official lives across the street). Shortly after, the official showed up at her door with a woman he said was from the township government and she was there to look at Ms. Yu’s home.
Ms. Yu said little, and the official did most of the talking, still trying to persuade her to renounce Falun Gong.
Since Ms. Yu took up Falun Gong in 2013, she has faced constant harassed by local officials for her faith.
Because she filed a criminal complaint in 2015 against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party who ordered the persecution, the police twice ransacked her home and videotaped it.
Four officers showed up on April 20, 2017, when her incapacitated husband was at home by himself. They took her copy of Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Gong, and ordered the village official to take them to the fields to look for Ms. Yu. Spotting her, they asked her if she was still practicing Falun Gong. She said it was such a great practice that she would definitely continue to practice it. The police videotaped her, grabbed her cellphone, and recorded her contact list.
The village official returned with three police officers on August 30, 2017, and insisted on making another video of her, because the first one didn’t turn out very well. She refused to comply.
The village official and the police searched Ms. Yu’s home again time on June 1, 2020, while wearing body cameras. Two of her calendars with information about Falun Gong were confiscated.
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