Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province: Local Government Recruits Rogues to Monitor Falun Gong Practitioners

(Minghui.org) Since Liu Yanta and Shang Hongtao took office as the secretary and deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) in Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province in early 2022, they have been working hand in glove with the Zhaoyuan City 610 Office, orchestrating local police and judiciary agencies to intensify the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in the city.

When Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party, ordered the eradication campaign against Falun Gong in 1999, he appointed the PLAC, an extra-judiciary agency that oversees the judiciary and public security departments, and the 610 Office, an extra-legal agency, to be in charge of the persecution.

In February 2023, the Zhaoyuan City PLAC and 610 Office hired unemployed rogues to monitor local Falun Gong practitioners and their efforts to raise awareness of the persecution of their faith. Any practitioner who talked to others at local markets would be approached by the rogues and asked about the content of the conversation.

When these rogues identified Falun Gong practitioners, some of them pretended to be interested in hearing from them about how Falun Gong is being persecuted. As soon as the practitioners shared some informational materials with them, they immediately took pictures of the practitioners, put on the red vests with the words “Anti-Cult Association,” and searched the practitioners’ bags. If the practitioners refused to cooperate, they held them and called the police. Several practitioners have been arrested this way in the past few months.

Some of the rogues were ordered to stake outside practitioners’ homes to monitor and harass them and their families; some went to the workplaces of the practitioners’ children to threaten them or their managers; some called practitioners’ families to harass them, rendering their families unable to live a peaceful life. 

In 2022, nearly 30 cases of Zhaoyuan Falun Gong practitioners’ arrests were reported by Minghui. Nearly 70 practitioners were harassed by staff members from townships, residential committees, and village offices at their homes or through phone calls. Among them, Ms. Yuan Ximei was harassed 8 times and Ms. Duan Shuying was harassed more than 10 times. 

Mr. Du Zhentian, Mr. Peng Lekuan, and Ms. Jiang Guixiu were sentenced in 2022; Mr. Wang Huayang has been indicted; and the cases against Mr. Lu Lunwen and his wife, Ms. Yang Zuojuan, have recently been submitted to the procuratorate. Due to information censorship, more persecution cases have yet to be reported.