(Minghui.org) It was recently learned that a Tianjin resident was sentenced to one and a half years in Shanghai for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Chu Yan is an employee of Bohai Company in Tianjin, a subsidiary of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). She was arrested on April 30, 2023, while visiting Shanghai (more than 600 miles away). She was taken to the Minhang District Detention Center and sentenced by a court in Shanghai at an unknown date.
This is not the first time that Ms. Chu has been targeted for her faith. She was previously arrested on December 28, 2017. At least 23 other Tianjin practitioners were arrested on the same day, per an order from the Tianjin Police Department. Ms. Chu was held at the Binhai New Area First Detention Center for 35 days before being released on bail on February 2, 2018.
More than ten officers from the Dagu Police Station surrounded Ms. Chu’s home on July 19, 2019. They shut off the power to her house, forcing her to open the door. She was taken to the Tanggu District Detention Center. After being held an unknown amount of time, she was released on bail.
Officers from the Dagu Police Station notified Ms. Chu in July 2020 that they submitted her pending 2017 case and 2019 case together to the local procuratorate. Her local street committee called her around the same time and ordered her to sign statements to renounce her faith, Falun Gong. They said she was on the list of Falun Gong practitioners they were instructed to call to sign the statements.
There is no follow-up report of the combined 2017-and-2019 case against Ms. Chu, and it is unclear whether her arrest in Shanghai was related to it.
Related Report:
Tianjin: 24 Arrested in One Day for Refusing to Renounce Falun Gong
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