(Minghui.org) When a Shanghai resident was about to board a train on April 4, 2023, she was stopped by the railroad police and had her bag searched. The police arrested Ms. Ying Yu after discovering a flash-drive with information about Falun Gong. Her home was ransacked later in the day and she has been held at the Changning District Detention Center since.

Ms. Ying Yu

This is the sixth time that Ms. Ying, around 50, has been arrested for her faith in Falun Gong, after the Chinese Communist Party began to persecute this ancient spiritual and meditation discipline in 1999.

Shortly after the onset of the persecution, Ms. Ying was arrested for going to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong and given a two-year labor camp term.

Ms. Ying traveled with her mother, Ms. Jin Yuehua, to Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province on June 2, 2006 to visit a relative. She left her purse on the train. When she remembered it, the train attendant had already turned her purse in to the police, upon finding Falun Gong materials in it. Ms. Ying was arrested when she returned to the train station to look for her purse.

The Guangzhou railroad police informed their counterpart in Shanghai, who then came and escorted Ms. Yang and her mother back, and detained them at the Putuo District Detention Center. Meanwhile, more than ten officers ransacked Ms. Ying’s home and confiscated her computer and Falun Gong books.

Both women were later taken to the Shanghai Legal Education School (a brainwashing center in disguise) and held there for three months. The police and residential committee staff members continued to harass them after they were released. Ms. Ying’s employer was also pressured to fire her. Just as Ms. Ying found a new job, the police harassed her new employer again and forced them to dismiss her.

Ms. Ying’s mother was arrested again on February 22, 2008 when she was watching the Shen Yun Performing Arts broadcast by New Tang Dynasty TV at home with ten other elderly practitioners. The police broke in and took all the practitioners to the Putuo District Detention Center. Most of them were detained for several months.

Ms. Ying’s next arrest was on May 25, 2008, together with three sisters, Ms. Guo Yueqin, Ms. Guo Yuefen and Ms. Guo Yuefang. Ms. Ying’s home was ransacked and she was held at the Putuo District Detention Center for a month before being released on bail.

Ms. Ying was arrested again weeks later on July 16, 2008 by police officer Li Weidong. The two computers she had at home, including the one used by her father, were confiscated. The police accused her of writing to Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, about the human rights violations in China, especially the persecution of her family. As the Beijing Olympics were about to start in three weeks, the police said it was a serious matter for her to write the letter. She was detained for a month and released on August 15.

Several plainclothes officers broke into Ms. Ying’s home at 7 a.m. on April 18, 2017 and arrested her. With a blank search warrant, they raided her place. She was first held in a detention center and later transferred to a brainwashing center. Kept in the dark of her whereabouts, her mother in her 80s frequented the police station to demand her release. The police refused to release her with the excuse that she didn’t renounce Falun Gong.

Related report:Shanghai Woman Detained for 3 Months and Counting