(Minghui.org) It was recently learned that a 51-year-old resident of Wuhan City, Hubei Province had been sentenced to three years and nine months for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Zhou Hongyan was arrested on March 27, 2023, after being reported for distributing Falun Gong informational materials in an apartment complex. It is unclear when she was indicted, tried, or sentenced. Her family does not know where she is being detained. They only knew that a woman prosecutor named Liu Lan from the Hongshan District Procuratorate and a male judge named Liu Yufei from the Hongshan District Court were involved in her case.
This is the second time that Ms. Zhou has been sentenced for her faith. She was previously arrested on November 6, 2016 and sentenced to three and a half years on September 5, 2017.
Ms. Zhou’s latest sentencing put more strain on her family, whose support of her practice of Falun Gong has already been dwindling as a result of the communist regime’s hate propaganda and implication policy.
Ms. Zhou took up Falun Gong in March 1999, when she was 26. Her husband and both sides of their families supported her back then, upon witnessing how Falun Gong had turned her into a healthier and calmer person. Their attitude changed, however, after the communist regime began to persecute Falun Gong four months later. They were misled by the hate propaganda and feared being implicated. Ms. Zhou stopped practicing Falun Gong under their pressure.
In the next few years, Ms. Zhou’s health went downhill and she suffered from cervical spondylosis, chronic bronchitis, rhinitis, dizziness, and fatigue. She resumed practicing Falun Gong in 2012. All of her symptoms disappeared in a matter of two months. Her husband was supportive of her practice again, but he had a change of heart after she was arrested in January 2014, when security guards at the Wuhan Biology Engineering College caught her distributing Falun Gong informational materials on campus.
Ms. Zhou was taken to a police station and interrogated. One officer threatened to tie her limbs up and another officer threatened to have her do a blood test (she learned later that many Falun Gong practitioners were forced to undergo blood tests to see if they were good candidates for live organ harvesting).
The police also confiscated Ms. Zhou’s cell phone and she was unable to contact her son, then a high school student, who had been waiting at home for her to return to cook dinner. She later managed to take back her phone when the police were not looking. She called her husband, who came to seek her release. The police extorted 500 yuan from him before letting her go. By then, it was past 10 p.m.
Ms. Zhou’s husband was terrified by the incident and feared being implicated. He asked to separate from her even though they had always enjoyed a harmonious marriage. He moved out and seldom came back home to see their son. He later even stopped giving her child support. Ms. Zhou, a former accountant, did odd jobs to make ends meet.
In December 2014, Ms. Zhou’s husband filed for divorce on the grounds that she practiced Falun Gong. She did not agree. Her husband and mother-in-law then demanded that she stop practicing Falun Gong. She held firm to her faith, as Falun Gong only taught her to be a more loving and caring wife and mother. It is unclear whether her husband withdrew his divorce application or indeed divorced her.
Related Report:Four Hubei Women Sentenced for Distributing Falun Gong Materials
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