(Minghui.org) A total of 435 incidents of Falun Gong practitioners being arrested or harassed for their faith were reported in October 2024.
The 186 arrest cases include 26 that took place in the first half of 2024, 6 in July, 18 in August, 49 in September, 69 in October, and 18 cases of unknown dates of occurrence in 2024.
The 249 harassment cases break down into 11 incidents in the first half of 2024, 8 in July, 18 in August, 112 in September, 76 in October, and 24 cases for which the exact dates in 2024 are not known.
Due to strict information censorship in China, persecution cases can’t always be reported in a timely manner, nor is all the information readily available.
The 435 targeted practitioners, including 67 who were 60 or older at the time of their arrests or harassment, hailed from 19 provinces and 4 centrally-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Tianjin). Heilongjiang reported the most combined arrest and harassment cases (84), followed by 68 in Jilin and 47 in Sichuan. Eight other regions also had double-digit cases between 10 and 36. The remaining twelve regions had single-digit cases between 1 and 9.
Arrests Before “Sensitive Dates”
In Luzhou City, Sichuan Province, six people were arrested within one week prior to China’s national day on October 1, 2024. It is commonplace for the communist regime to ramp up the persecution of practitioners around its sensitive dates.
Two of the six Luzhou residents, Ms. Luo Linrong, 73, and her younger sister, Ms. Luo Linming, were arrested on September 19, after they ran into each other at a local fair and sat down to chat. The arresting officers said they had been following the older Ms. Luo for several days and knew her exact whereabouts.
The two sisters were searched and taken to the police department. After interrogating them separately, the police used the keys they seized from them and raided their homes. The police confiscated Ms. Luo Linming’s Falun Gong books, without allowing her family to verify the items, nor did they give them a confiscation list. Ms. Luo was released after she was detained for ten days.
Even though the police did not find any Falun Gong materials at Ms. Luo Linrong’s home, they still refused to release her. Her family wasn’t given her detention notice or notified of her whereabouts. They checked with the local community officials, who referred them to the Nancheng Police Station, which in turn directed them to the Jiangyang District Police Department. An officer there said Ms. Luo had long been transferred to the local detention center. Her family went to the detention center to look for her, but the guards there refused to check to see if she was on the roster.
In Yanqing District, Beijing, fourteen practitioners, including Ms. Yang Xiulan and Ms. Wu Fangling, were arrested on September 23, 2024. Most of these practitioners had their homes ransacked. Two of their family members, who don’t practice Falun Gong, were also seized by the police.
Three officers knocked on Ms. Yang’s home in the morning. They raided her place and dumped all items related to Falun Gong on the ground. Her two computers, a printer, some cash, and a cellphone were taken away. Two officers later returned and photographed the items at her home.
Ms. Wu and her husband, Mr. Wang Jianmin, who doesn’t practice Falun Gong, were arrested by officers from the Xiadu Police Station, who accused them of visiting overseas websites by circumventing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) internet firewall. Ms. Wu’s arrest came only seven months after she finished serving a prison term of two years and eight months for practicing Falun Gong. She was also in the process of seeking reinstatement of her suspended pension.
Life Disrupted by the Persecution
The persecution of Falun Gong practitioners isn’t only limited to arrests, detention or torture, but also involves major disruption of practitioners’ everyday lives. In the harassment cases reported in October 2024, Mr. Cai Lianbao, a Falun Gong practitioner on a business trip, was intercepted by the police at the airport and another practitioner, Ms. Yang Aiqin, reported having her ID and household registration withheld for years, rendering her unable to find a job or even buy a cellphone, given the communist regime’s real-name registration policy on cellphone users.
Mr. Cai, of Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, traveled to Shanghai for work and took a flight back on September 14, 2024. As soon as he walked out of the airport lobby at around 10:30 p.m., five police officers approached him. Only one of them was in uniform and no one produced their IDs or proper documentation. They claimed to be from Yushu City, Jilin Province, and then began to ask for Mr. Cai’s cell phone number, ID number and home address.
Mr. Cai questioned the officers as to why they would interrupt his business travel or if he had violated any law. The officers implied that they suspected him of being involved in a serious crime. They brought Mr. Cai to the airport’s security office and forced him to sign a piece of paper with his personal information. As it was getting late and he did not want his family, who was with him, to worry, Mr. Cai was also forced to write on the document, against his will, that he never practiced Falun Gong before.
Upon returning home, Mr. Cai recalled that he received a call from the police in Jilin a few days before, saying that the government had issued a new policy about Falun Gong and they wanted to meet with him to remove him from a blacklist. A day after the call, Mr. Cai received a friend request on WeChat, a popular social media app in China. He accepted it, thinking it was a client from work, only to realize later on that it was the police.
When Ms. Yang, of Kaifeng City, Henan Province, finished serving a 6.5-year prison sentence for practicing Falun Gong on January 14, 2022, she was shocked to hear that the local police station had suspended her household registration. She contacted the police, but was even more shocked to be told that her ID number was associated with a different person.
According to the “Resident Identity Card Law,” “The citizen identity number is a unique, lifelong identity code for each citizen, compiled by the public security organs in accordance with the national standard.”
Ms. Yang thought the mix-up might have been a careless mistake on the police’s part, but they made it clear that they intentionally assigned her ID number to another person, in retaliation for her not renouncing Falun Gong. But without an ID or a household registration, Ms. Yang is unable to buy a cell phone, open a bank account, buy train or flight tickets, book a hotel or find a job.
In another case, the police arrested a Falun Gong practitioner in order to fill their quota of capturing suspects at large. Mr. Huang Xuejun, a former pharmacist from Anlu City, Hubei Province, was arrested on April 19, 2024 while working in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei. The police claimed that his name has been on the “wanted list” since November 2023. They took him back to Anlu the next day and held him in a brainwashing center for over 40 days.
Mr. Huang later learned that the police were given a quota to arrest suspects on the wanted list and they listed his name to fulfill the quota. After he was released on July 8, the 610 Office director threatened to arrest him and put him back on the wanted list again, if he didn’t cooperate with them in recording a video renouncing and denouncing Falun Gong. When he refused to comply, the director further threatened to sentence Mr. Huang to prison. To avoid further persecution, Mr. Huang has been forced to live away from home since some time around October 2024.
Family Members Implicated
In addition to the practitioners themselves, family members are often targeted in the persecution as well.
After Ms. Xu Guoqin, a Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province resident in her 70s, was forced to live away from home in late September 2024 to avoid being sentenced for distributing Falun Gong materials, the police arrested her daughter and forced Ms. Xu to turn herself in.
Outraged by the police’s despicable act, Ms. Xu’s husband suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away. Having been taken to the local detention center, Ms. Xu wasn’t allowed to attend his funeral.
Ms. Zhang Xiaojia, the daughter of a Falun Gong practitioner in Shantou City, Guangdong Province, was detained while passing through customs in Hong Kong, after she was found to have Falun Gong materials in her luggage. She was deported to a police station in Shantou.
Ms. Zhang, who doesn’t practice Falun Gong herself, called her family at 12:40 p.m. on October 16, 2024, after boarding the high-speed rail from Shantou to Hong Kong. Her family was unable to reach her after that. At around 4 p.m. the next day, they were informed that Ms. Zhang was denied entry to Hong Kong, after customs officers found Falun Gong materials in her bag. She was sent back to the Jinpu Police Station in Chaoyang District, Shantou, which then transferred her to the Gurao Police Station. After confirming her identity, the police took her to the Shantou City Detention Center. It’s not clear whether she is still detained.
Since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999, Ms. Zhang’s mother, Ms. Qiu Xiuping, and Ms. Qiu’s six daughters, whether they practice Falun Gong or not, have all been repeatedly targeted.
Between 2000 and 2011, the police harassed the family hundreds of times. The family struggled even more when Ms. Qiu’s husband passed away in 2005. Ms. Qiu ran a small business to support herself and her six daughters.
Ms. Qiu’s oldest daughter, Ms. Zhang Xiaoling, was arrested on August 3, 2011, for talking to people about Falun Gong. Her sister, Ms. Zhang Yueqi, then 16, was also arrested when she went to visit her. When their other sister, Ms. Zhang Liling, went to the police station to demand their release, she was arrested herself and detained overnight at the police station. Ms. Zhang Xiaoling was later given two years, and Ms. Zhang Yueqi was given one year at the Chatou Forced Labor Camp.
Involuntary Drug Administration and Forced Blood Sample Collection
Another aspect of the persecution is the “destroy them physically” policy given by Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime who ordered the persecution. This directive was pronounced with two other guidelines: “ruin their reputation” and “bankrupt them.”
Among the persecution cases reported in October 2024, Ms. Liu Binghuan, a mentally healthy woman, was injected with sedatives and other unknown drugs at two different psychiatric hospitals after she was arrested for practicing Falun Gong. Another practitioner, Ms. Liu Guiying, was forced to give blood and hair samples to the police, possibly to be added to the database for the forced organ harvesting and transplant industry, a new form of genocide that has been going on for the past 25 years.
Ms. Liu Binghuan was arrested at her rental place in Yangshan County, Qingyuan City, Guangdong Province, on the night of September 29, 2024. She was taken to the Cihang Psychiatric Hospital in Yangshan County, tied up, and repeatedly injected with sedatives.
The police took her to the Qingxin Detention Center the next day, but she was denied admission after a mandatory physical examination found she had a systolic blood pressure of over 200 mmHg (when a normal range is 120 or lower). Instead of releasing her, the police took her to the Qingyuan City Third People’s Hospital (another psychiatric hospital). She was again injected with sedatives, along with unknown drugs. She had temporary memory loss as a result, and became dazed and confused.
Ms. Liu Guiying had just stepped outside her apartment building in Pingdu City, Shandong Province, at noon on April 26, 2024, when she heard someone calling her name. In a flash, four plainclothes officers swarmed her and snatched her bag and electric bicycle key. They pushed her into an unmarked car and drove her straight to the Dongge Police Station for interrogation. She was released at 10:30 p.m.
Ms. Liu’s husband received a call at around 10 a.m. on May 13, 2024, ordering him to notify his wife to report to the police station right away. She went there and was immediately seized. The police said they were giving her ten days of detention. At 1:30 p.m., two officers took her to the Pingdu Hospital for a physical examination. Her systolic blood pressure was 220 mmHg and her heart rate was 119 (a healthy resting range is between 60 and 100 beats per minute).
The local detention center refused to admit Ms. Liu due to her health. Officer Zhang then forced her to take some unknown drugs before taking her to the same hospital for another checkup. He then drove her to the detention center again. The guards noted that Ms. Liu was shaking uncontrollably and declined to admit her. Zhang managed to use his connections to have her admitted at 10:30 p.m. that night.
Ms. Liu was released on May 24, 2024. Her husband received another call from officer Zhang on September 9, again ordering his wife to report to the police. This time Ms. Liu did not comply. At around 3 p.m. on September 14, Zhang led two male officers to her home and forcibly drew her blood and removed a few strands of her hair without explaining why. Ms. Liu fears that the samples will be used to see if she is a candidate for involuntary organ donation in the state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.
Financial Devastation
As stated above, “bankrupt them” is one of three persecution policies leveled against Falun Gong practitioners. In the two cases listed below, a former bank manager was repeatedly forced to pay fines for not reporting her whereabouts after work, and another businesswoman had her pension suspended after serving a six-year prison term.
Ms. Fu Xuebing, a 53-year-old resident of Meizhou City, Guangdong Province, was arrested on September 10, 2024, as soon as she stepped outside her apartment building. She was taken to the local detention center and issued a formal arrest warrant around October 15. She is now facing indictment for practicing Falun Gong.
This is not the first time Ms. Fu has been targeted for her faith. She was previously arrested in 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014. Her home was ransacked numerous times and her personal property was confiscated.
In addition to being arrested and incarcerated, Ms. Fu was also repeatedly fined for not calling her supervisor at the Bank of China Meizhou City Division to report her whereabouts at night or on holidays (as the authorities tried to prevent her from going out to distribute Falun Gong materials). She worked at the bank as a lobby manager for 16 years, but when she was eventually fired on August 6, 2008, she was not given any severance pay.
Ms. Fu was sentenced to seven years after her arrest in 2014. She endured horrific abuse in prison and was released early in June 2020, only to face frequent harassment by the police after she returned home.
Ms. Zhu Chunmei, of Wuhan City, Hubei Province, was arrested earlier this year for talking to people about Falun Gong. She was first held in the Wuhan City First Detention Center and later transferred to the Ankang Hospital after she developed a medical condition in custody.
Ms. Zhu, the owner of two dry cleaning establishments, has also been targeted for her faith over the past many years. She was previously arrested on August 26, 2013, and sentenced to six years for trying to rescue a detained practitioner. She endured brutal torture in custody and was given unknown drugs that resulted in sharp chest pain, nose bleeds, and blood blisters on her head.
When Ms. Zhu was finally released, she was so weak that she lost the ability to work. Her husband also divorced her. During her prison term, her family borrowed 65,000 yuan to contribute to her retirement account. Before she could pay back the money, the 610 Office, Political and Legal Affairs Committee, and the Qing’an County Community Affairs Office ordered the Xinzhou District Social Security Bureau to suspend her pension, using the excuse that she refused to renounce Falun Gong. They even ordered her to return the 40,000 yuan in pension payments she received during her prison term.
Related Reports:
Reported in September 2024: 552 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested or Harassed for Their Faith
1,219 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested or Harassed for Their Faith in July and August 2024
2,714 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested or Harassed for Their Faith in the First Half of 2024
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