(Minghui.org) It was recently confirmed by Minghui.org that a Tai’an City, Shandong Province resident was sentenced to one year in 2020 for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1999.

The ordeal of Mr. Li Rong, around 40, stemmed from a criminal complaint that he filed in 2015 against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the CCP who ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. Mr. Li used to suffer from a stomach condition and several other chronic diseases, but he soon recovered after taking up Falun Gong. He also easily quit smoking and drinking. With the onset of the persecution, he could no longer practice his faith freely and faced constant danger of being arrested.

Upon finding out about Mr. Li’s criminal complaint, officers of Anjia Village Police Station in Feicheng kept harassing him over the phone and threatened to put him in jail. Feicheng City is under the administration of Tai’an City. Mr. Li moved to Tai’an in 2009 to start a new job, but Feicheng police still targeted him for his faith.

In 2019, Mr. Li’s father became seriously ill. He traveled over 100 miles between his residence in Tai’an City and his parents’ home in Feicheng City two or three times every week to care for the elderly couple.

On November 14, 2019, officers of the Longquan Police Station in Tai’an, Anjia Village Police Station in Feicheng and secretary of the Anjia Village arrested Mr. Li at his workplace, the Zhongcheng Automation Company, and handcuffed him in front of his colleagues. After raiding Mr. Li’s rental place in Tai’an, the police also waited there, attempting unsuccessfully to arrest other practitioners when they came to visit Mr. Li.

Mr. Li was taken to the Feicheng City Detention Center the next day.

Shortly after Mr. Li’s arrest, Ji Zheng, the owner of the company that Mr. Li had worked for ten years, forced him to submit a resignation letter. Ji didn’t give any severance pay to Mr. Li. Ji once said that the CCP made him rich and that he deeply loves the CCP and resents Falun Gong.

The Feicheng City Court sentenced Mr. Li to one year in 2020. He served time at the Shandong Province Prison in Jinan, the capital of Shandong.

During Mr. Li’s detention, his father passed away and his mother struggled with a severe medical condition. His wife quit her full-time job and took on a part-time job in order to care for her mother-in-law and her own two daughters. The entire family lived in poverty.