(Minghui.org) Three women in Kaiyuan City, Liaoning Province are facing prosecution for their faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Su Changqin, 76, Ms. Liu Lili, 55, and Ms. Yang Yukun, 62, were arrested on July 6, 2023 and interrogated by captain Wang Yi (+86-13470176868) and vice captain Liu Jiansheng (+86-15141470101) of the Kaiyuan City Domestic Security Office. Ms. Yang was released on bail the next day, and Ms. Su and Ms. Liu on July 22.
The police submitted the three women’s cases to the Changtu County Procuratorate on November 3 and a prosecutor surnamed Hu (+86-24-75920102) was assigned to the cases. Both Changtu County and Kaiyuan City are under the administration of Tieling City.
Hu notified the three women and their families on November 22 that a decision regarding whether to charge them would be made by December 3, 2023. It is unclear whether Hu has filed indictments against the three practitioners at the time of writing.
Ms. Su, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Yang’s husband, Mr. Feng Yong, on December 4 independently submitted complaints against officers Wang and Liu via three channels, including “12337” (an online platform designated for reporting violations of discipline and law by police and judicial workers), “12389” (a telephone platform that the Ministry of Public Security uses to take complaints and reports from the public), and “12309” (an online platform run by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate).
The two officers were accused of interrogating Ms. Su, Ms. Liu, and Ms. Yang with coercion, deceit, and threats, as well as of seeking their prosecution without any legal basis.
Ms. Yang was unable to file complaints herself because she has been missing since November 2023. Her husband wrote in the complaints that she felt enormous pressure after she was summoned to the Changtu County Procuratorate on November 3 to sign her case file, as officer Liu threatened her that day to not allow the couple’s grandson to attend college if she kept practicing Falun Gong. She did not want to renounce her faith but she was deeply troubled by the possibility that her grandson might be implicated. She began having trouble falling asleep and even said once that she’d simply kill herself if the police kept pressuring her to renounce Falun Gong. [Note: Falun Gong prohibits any form of killing (including suicide), and Ms. Yang’s mental state only attests to the brutality of the communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and implication of their loved ones.]
Her husband then could not find her anywhere a few days later. Their son returned from out of town to look for her, with no luck. The police put her on the wanted list on November 22, 2023 when they ordered her to report to the procuratorate again and learned from her husband that she had gone missing. Her husband does not know where she is or if she is still alive.
Below are further details of the persecution of Ms. Yang and the other two practitioners as gleaned from their complaints.
Arrested on July 6 and Released on Bail Later
Ms. Liu, Ms. Su, and Ms. Yang were arrested on the afternoon of July 6, 2023, after being suspected of putting up self-adhesive stickers bearing Falun Gong messages on road guardrails. The arresting officers from the Huangqizhai Police Station took them to the Kaiyuan City Domestic Security Office, where they were interrogated one by one by captain Wang and vice captain Liu.
Wang promised to release Ms. Su that night if she cooperated with him during the interrogation. He asked if she had pasted the self-adhesive stickers found on the guardrails. She denied having done so. Wang then asked where she got the stickers for Ms. Su and Ms. Yang to put on the guardrails.
Ms. Su later wrote in the complaints that she had very little education and felt compelled to explain how Ms. Su and Ms. Yang got the stickers after Wang demanded to know the source of the stickers. Looking back, she said she was duped by Wang’s line of questioning because she never said Ms. Su and Ms. Yang put up the stickers, much less admit she gave the stickers to them for distribution.
She said in the complaint that because she wanted to protect Ms. Liu and Ms. Yang because they both have some mobility issues (the former as a result of having polio in childhood and the latter as a result of a car accident at the age 19), she made up some answers when facing Wang’s questioning. She said that since she lives next to a market, her friends and acquaintances often stored their goods for sale at the market in her house. The stickers could be left in her house by someone but she really had no idea of who that was.
Wang then had Ms. Su sign the interrogation records. He and Liu later drove Ms. Su, Ms. Liu and Ms. Yang to a utility pole in Kaiyuan City, where there was a sticker bearing a Falun Gong message. Wang asked Ms. Su if she had put up the sticker and she said no. Liu then ordered her to point at the sticker and have her picture taken. She refused and Liu deceived her into putting a hand on the utility pole before taking a picture of her.
Ms. Su and Ms. Liu were both given 15 days of detention. While held in a local lockup, Ms. Liu had insufficient blood supply to her heart and experienced rapid heartbeat. Her systolic blood pressure also registered at 197 mmHg. She and Ms. Su were released on bail on July 22, 2023, while Ms. Yang was released the day after her arrest after she was found to have high blood pressure.
Ms. Liu also reported that her home was raided on July 20 and all her Falun Gong books were confiscated. It is unclear whether officers Wang and Liu were present during the raid.
Ordered to Undergo Physical Examination on October 19
Wang and Liu led a few officers and went to all three women’s homes on October 19, 2023 and ordered them to undergo physical examinations in preparation for their detention. They grabbed Ms. Yang and Ms. Su first before driving to Ms. Liu’s home.
Upon hearing the knock on the door, Ms. Liu was so terrified that she had a relapse of her heart condition and collapsed on the ground. Her son said to the police outside “I’ll hold you responsible should anything happen to my mom.” Wang threatened to call in a locksmith. Ms. Liu’s son reluctantly opened the door.
The police surrounded Ms. Liu while she was still unable to stand up. Her husband began to videotape the police and Wang threatened to arrest him as well. As Ms. Liu remained extremely weak, Wang allowed her family to call an ambulance. She was taken to the Kaiyuan City Central Hospital. The police followed along and accused her of faking even after she was diagnosed with insufficient blood supply to her heart. As she remained in serious condition, they relented and put her on bail again.
The police then took Ms. Yang and Ms. Su to the Yinchuan District Hospital in Tieling City, where they were found to have systolic blood pressure readings of 210 and 200 mmHg, respectively. They were both given hypertension medication but their blood pressure readings remained the same one hour later. Despite this, the police still took them to a local detention center, which denied them admission. Wang then released both women on bail again.
Summoned to Procuratorate to Sign Case Files on November 3
Wang and Liu had the three women’s local police stations notify them to report to the Changtu County Procuratorate on November 3 to sign their case files. Mr. Yang’s husband accompanied her there. Ms. Liu also went on her own as requested.
Ms. Su was resting in bed that day when the Xiafei Police Station officers showed up to pass Wang’s order for her to report to the Changtu County Procuratorate. She said that she was extremely dizzy due to her high blood pressure and could not leave her house. The police then called Wang and said it’d be better he deliver the case file to her home for her to sign.
Wang, Liu and a few other officers soon arrived. None of them wore their police uniforms. They insisted that Ms. Liu must report to the procuratorate and dragged her into their cruiser. She requested to have her 48-year-old son, who has a mental disability, to tag along but Wang rejected her on the grounds that there was no room in the cruiser.
Ms. Su had motion sickness and threw up during the ride. After they arrived at the protectorate, Liu grabbed her hand to sign and fingerprint her case file. She was not allowed to read the document. After that, the police drove her back to a place in Kaiyuan City and asked her to catch a taxi to go home. She said her financial situation was not good and Wang said she should feel lucky that they did not fine her this time. She ended up paying 100 yuan for a taxi.
Summoned to the Procuratorate Again on November 22
The Xiafei Police Station notified Ms. Su to the Changtu County Procuratorate on November 22 to sign a “notice of the time window to review the case.” She went as requested and prosecutor Hu asked her where she got the stickers for Ms. Liu and Ms. Yang to put up on the guardrails. She again repeated the made-up account she said to officer Wang during the interrogation back on July 6. She then signed the notice as ordered by Hu. The notice said that Article 172 of the Criminal Procedure Law requires procuratorates to make a decision within one month of receipt of cases so Hu had from November 3 to December 3 to review her case and decide whether to indict her.
Ms. Liu and Ms. Yang also got summoned on the same day. Ms. Liu went, but Ms. Yang did not show up because she has been missing since November 2023 as mentioned earlier in the article. The police, however, put her on the wanted list when her husband said he didn’t even know where she was or whether she was still alive. The police threatened to arrest and fine her husband since he co-signed her bail release form. Her husband felt disgusted by the police and declared in his complaints against officers Wang and Liu to nullify his signature on his wife’s bail release form.
Ms. Liu’s Son Detained for 15 Days, Car and Cell Phones Impounded
Ms. Liu relied on her son, Mr. Zhang Yiming, who does not practice Falun Gong, to get around due to her mobility issues. He was thus implicated after the police discovered a surveillance footage of him driving his mother, Ms. Su, and Ms. Yang to a certain place in June 2023. The police suspected that he also gave the three women a ride to the place where they were arrested on July 6, 2023.
Wang arrested Mr. Zhang on July 15 and impounded his car and two cell phones. Wang next took him to different places in Kaiyuan and forced him to “admit” that he had driven his mother and the other two women to those places to put up Falun Gong stickers. He told his mother later that he did whatever Wang ordered him to because Wang threatened to shock him with electric batons if he did not comply. He was released 15 days later. Wang still refused to return his car and two cell phones, as well as his mother’s cell phone, as of today.
Benefiting from Falun Gong
Ms. Liu recounted in her complaints how she benefited from practicing Falun Gong. She used to suffer from severe kidney disease, frequent urination, and hematuria. She tried both Western and Chinese medicine, but nothing worked. She lost appetite and had trouble controlling her bladder. She’d wet her pants whenever she heard the sound of water running. After she took up Falun Gong in March 1999, all her symptoms disappeared and she also quit her bad temper and became a better person. When her restaurant, which she started in 1984, folded in 2001, her business partners owed her nearly 20,000 yuan and refused to pay. Being a Falun Gong practitioner, she was able to put herself in their shoes and understood that they probably struggled to pay her back. She thus decided to forgive the loan they owed her.
Ms. Yang’s husband also wrote about Falun Gong’s power in transforming people. He served as a village head before the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999. He said there was a villager who used to refuse to pay certain mandatory fees no matter how hard he tried to make her. Then one day she suddenly took the initiative to pay the fees. He was stunned and she explained that she had taken up Falun Gong and learned to be a good and considerate person. He thus had a very good impression of Falun Gong and always supported his wife when she later also took up Falun Gong.
He said that Falun Gong cured Ms. Yang’s severe pulmonary edema and saved their family medical expenses and heartaches of seeing her suffer in pain. He couldn’t understand why the government is prosecuting law-abiding citizens like his wife who just wanted to stay healthy by practicing Falun Gong.
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