(Minghui.org) A Tianjin native was sentenced to 13 years in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in 2022 for practicing Falun Gong. Mr. Chu Jidong was once held in the Shizuishan Prison in Ningxia. His family confirmed that he had been transferred to another location at an unknown time, but they were never notified of his current whereabouts.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline with the core principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. It has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Chu, 49, is a former employee of the Sixth Engineering Company of China Petroleum and Natural Gas Pipeline Bureau in Tianjin. While working in Qingyang City, Gansu Province for a project in March 2021, he saw a thief at the construction site one night. He tried to stop the thief, but the thief hit him in the head with a brick. He was then allowed to return to Tianjin to recover from his injuries.
When Mr. Chu had a layover at the Yinchuan City Airport in Ningxia, the airport security found Falun Gong lectures in his cellphone and arrested him. The security also found in the police’s database his previous labor camp term for practicing Falun Gong. They accused him of being a repeat offender and held him in detention.
Mr. Chu’s manager at work contacted the Yinchuan police and demanded to see him, but was rejected. The Yinchuan police also refused to hand off Mr. Chu’s case to their counterparts in Tianjin and insisted on keeping him at Yinchuan City Detention Center.
Mr. Chu held a hunger strike to protest the persecution, but was force fed. After over a year of detention, he was sentenced to 13 years around May 2022 and transferred to the Shizuishan Prison in Ningxia. He was subjected to strict management, deprived of sleep and forced to sit on a small stool for long hours every day. He protested by shouting “Falun Dafa is good; Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance is good.” The authorities later transferred him to another prison, but refused to tell his family where he was.
Mr. Chu’s wife wasn’t working when he was arrested. She struggled to make ends meet and also raise their sixth-grader son by herself.
Mr. Chu was previously arrested in September 1999 for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and given one year of forced labor. Because he refused to renounce Falun Gong, the authorities extended his term by one year and and then by three years.
Related Report:Displaced Tianjin Resident Sentenced to 13 Years in Ningxia for Practicing Falun Gong
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