More Than 30 Falun Gong Practitioners Held in a Brainwashing Center in Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province

(Minghui.org) The Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) of Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, is holding brainwashing sessions at Qiqihar Comprehensive Governance Center to persecute Falun Gong practitioners.

Officers from each local police station have seized practitioners in their precincts and taken them to the brainwashing sessions. At least 30 practitioners have been held there at one point or another since the beginning of this year. More than ten practitioners have been released after either they or their families were coerced into signing documents renouncing Falun Gong.

Close-up view of Qiqihar Comprehensive Governance Center

The Qiqihar Comprehensive Governance Center from further away

Officials from the United Front Work Department, and PLACs in various districts in Qiqihar, held a meeting in early 2023 to discuss the implementation of the directives from the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress.

The takeaway from the meeting was to carry out the persecution at the community level. The residential committees and local police stations work together as a grid, in the new “social governance system.” They are responsible for searching for practitioners who talk to people about Falun Gong in major shopping malls, markets, and bus stops. Every grid was given the goal of “making major breakthroughs” in the fight against Falun Gong. Once a practitioner is found to be engaging in “illegal” activities, they will face suspension of their salary or other types of “punishment,” including being taken to a brainwashing center set up by the provincial-level officials.

Ms. Tao (given name unknown), 80, was arrested by officers from the Minhang Road Police Station on March 23, 2023. At the Qiqihar Comprehensive Governance Center, more than a dozen provincial and municipal officers worked on her. When she refused to renounce Falun Gong as ordered, they threatened to stop her two daughters’ pay. Her two daughters were forced to sign a renunciation statement on her behalf. She was later coerced into signing the statement as well, against her will. She was released on March 25.

Ms. Tao’s latest arrest came a year after she was fined 100,000 yuan for printing Falun Gong information on paper currency bills, a channel that practitioners utilized to spread information about the persecution given the strict censorship in China. The police said that they would return the money if she didn’t “commit more crimes” for a year. Just as she got the money back, she was arrested again and taken to the brainwashing center.

Since the onset of the persecution in 1999, the authorities in Qiqihar have been closely following the Falun Gong eradication policy. As of August 20, 2022, 74 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners due to the persecution have been documented. The oldest practitioner was Ms. Li Jingxia, an 85-year-old retired middle school teacher. The youngest one was Ms. Wang Weihua, only 24 years old. The practitioners came from different walks of life; some were engineers, college teachers, civil servants, entrepreneurs, accountants, and so on.

Perpetrators involved in the persecution:

Li Yugang (李玉刚), secretary of the PLAC of Heilongjiang Province, former mayor of QiqiharLi Yongjun (李拥军), member of Qiqihar Party Committee and secretary of Qiqihar PLAC: [phone], [phone], [phone]Xu Jiang (徐江), deputy secretary of Qiqihar PLACQiao Haidong (乔海东), deputy secretary of Qiqihar PLACYu Hongwei (于宏伟), deputy Secretary of Qiqihar PLACXiao Yuwei (萧昱巍), deputy Secretary of Qiqihar PLACZhang Xuesong (张雪松), deputy Secretary of Qiqihar PLACChen Dong (陈东), vice mayor of Qiqihar City and director of the Qiqihar Police DepartmentShen Hongyu (沈宏宇), mayor of Qiqihar City and secretary of Qiqihar PLAC

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