2,941 Reported Arrested and Harassed for Faith in July and August 2021

Based on an original report from Minghui.org

From July to August 2021, Minghui.org received reports of 884 practitioners arrested and 2,057 practitioners harassed for their faith in Falun Gong.

The current number of reported arrests in 2021 total 4,175. Of the arrests, 731 arrests took place in 2020, 2,956 arrests occurred in the first half of 2021, and 457 arrests occurred in July and August. 

Of the 8,236 confirmed incidents of harassment reported this year, 7 took place in 2016; 1,189 in 2020; 6,103 in the first half of 2021; 609 in July; and 290 in August.

For the 2,941 newly confirmed cases in July and August, the practitioners hailed from 30 provinces and municipalities. The provinces of Hebei (553), Shandong (548) and Sichuan (301) topped the list. Jilin (226), Liaoning (204), Shanxi (147), Heilongjiang (143), and Hubei (113) ranked 4th to 8th with over 100 cases. Seventeen other regions registered double-digit cases and five provinces had single-digit cases. The location of one case of harassment is unknown. 

Among the targeted practitioners, 427 had their homes ransacked, 466 remain in custody, and 17 have been forced to live away from home to avoid further persecution. 

A total of 229 practitioners were over 65, with 6 in their 90s. In particular, a 98-year-old Jilin City, Jilin Province, resident was arrested for talking to people about Falun Gong and held in a metal cage for hours at the police station.

Due to the strict internet censorship in China, information may be incomplete or delayed.

Below is a sample of the arrests and cases of harassment that occurred in July and August 2021.

Police Violence

Restaurant Employees Arrested and Interrogated

At around 8:20 p.m. on July 22, Mr. Chen Xinye of Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, went to the restaurant where his wife Ms. Chen Lihui worked to take her home. When he arrived, nearly 30 plainclothes officers stormed in and forced the customers to leave. When Mr. Liu Xianyong, a customer who also practices Falun Gong, tried to resist, the police pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him. 

The police handcuffed Liu, Mr. Chen, Ms. Chen, and the 11 other restaurant employees and forced them to half-squat while the police searched the restaurant.

Not finding things related to Falun Gong, the police dismantled all the surveillance cameras in the restaurant. At around 10 p.m., they put black hoods on all 14 people, put them in the police van, and forced them to squat in the back. 

After one night of interrogation, the restaurant employees were released the next day. Ms. Chen was released on August 21 after one month of detention, but her husband and Liu remain in custody.

Detained and Harassed Despite Health Condition

After Two Labor Camp Terms and a Prison Term, Woman with 90-degree Hunchback Arrested Again

Permanently with a hunchback due to prior torture in custody, Ms. Jiang Xinyang was quickly identified on a surveillance camera talking to people about Falun Gong. Officers from the Qianfoshan Police Station in Jinan City, Shandong Province broke into her home and arrested her on early on July 22, 2021. She has since been then taken to a detention center and has been held there ever since.

Jiang, 65-years-old, worked at Jinan Gas Appliances before she retired. Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong, she was arrested several times and given two labor camp terms for a total of 3.5 years between 2004 and 2007.

During Jiang’s second forced labor term in 2007, she was tortured and contracted lung tuberculosis, lymphatic tuberculosis, and spinal tuberculosis. She had holes (the biggest one being 7cm in diameter) in her lungs, and she suffered necrosis of several of her vertebrae. 

The skin on her back turned black, and on either side of the lumbar vertebra were tuberculosis masses of over ten centimeters. Her third and the fourth vertebrae were largely eroded by mycobacterium tuberculosis, and the dead vertebrae pressed against nerves, causing unbearable pain when she moved her legs.

Jiang was later treated in an operation lasted over nine hours and costed her family over 100,000 yuan, where doctors had to remove the tuberculosis lesion and the dead vertebrae and stabilize her spine with two steel plates fixed by four screws. She was left with three long incisions on her back, suffered post-surgical pain, and itched all over. Despite the surgery, however, Jiang has not been able to straighten her back and her hunchback has continually worsened. 

Family Torn Apart

Parents and Daughter Detained for Practicing Falun Gong

While Ms. Li Shuang is still detained in Beijing following her arrest two years ago, her parents in Hebei Province were arrested on June 16, 2021, for their shared faith in Falun Gong.

Ms. Li, a 30-year-old native of Laishui County, Hebei Province, worked for an electronic products company in Beijing. She was arrested on a bus on August 11, 2019, after the police stopped it to arrest her. She has been held in the Xicheng District Detention Center in Beijing since then.

Ms. Li’s parents still live in Laishui County, Hebei Province. Her mother, Ms. Song Shuhua, was arrested on the morning of June 16, 2021, after being reported for talking to people about Falun Gong in a market. The police then ransacked her home and arrested her husband, Mr. Li Guolin. All of their Falun Gong books were confiscated.

The police first held the couple in the Laishui County Lockup and promised to release them in 15 days. When the couple’s son went to the lockup to take them home on the morning of July 1, the police said they were busy celebrating the Chinese Communist Party’s 100-year founding and told him to come back in the afternoon. 

The couple’s son returned at 1:30 p.m. and was told that the police had taken his parents away. But the guards refused to say where. 

The son later found out that the couple was still in the lockup when he went there in the early afternoon. In fact, the police came at 5 p.m. and took Ms. Song to the Baoding City Detention Center and Mr. Li to Laishui County Detention Center. The police also told their son to pay 130 yuan for their living expense in the lockup. Their arrests were approved in early July.

Professionals Targeted

College Teacher Forced to Sign Statement Renouncing Falun Gong

Ms. Song Wenshuang, a 52-year-old teacher at the Tianjin Engineering Technical Institute, was seized at work at 9:40 a.m. on June 8, 2021, by the police and residential committee staff members. With the consent of her supervisor, five officers carried Ms. Song downstairs from the third floor, pushed her into the back of a car, and drove her to the police station.

The police interrogated Ms. Song and ordered her to sign a prepared statement to renounce Falun Gong, which also had content that demonized the practice. When Ms. Song refused, one police officer held her right shoulder and right arm and pressed her against the wall. Sun Xiaoliang, the deputy chief of the police station, tried to pry her fist open. Then officer Cui Chen came in and slapped Ms. Song in the face repeatedly. She almost fainted. It was not until Ms. Song read out loud Cui’s police number that he stopped beating her. Finally they forced Ms. Song to sign and fingerprint the statement. They also videotaped her.

Police chief Sun didn’t stop here. He ordered Ms. Song to fingerprint another document with content slandering Falun Gong’s founder. Ms. Song grabbed the paper and threw it away. They printed out another copy, but Ms. Song still refused to comply. She asked, “I didn’t commit any crime, so why do you treat me this way?” Sun claimed that he was doing that on behalf of the CCP and all the other officers had to obey his order.

After holding Ms. Song at the police station for several hours, the police notified Sun Jiandong, the dean of Ms. Song’s department, to take her home at around 12:30 p.m.

Elderly Persecuted

Partially Paralyzed from Torture, 72-year-old Woman Harassed

Since March 2021, Ms. Wu Guifang, 72, of Zhoukou City, Henan Province, has been harassed many times and arrested by the neighborhood committee. The harassment caused Ms. Wu’s heart disease to relapse and she was hospitalized for half a month; her youngest son, who had just been discharged from the hospital, was rushed to the hospital again and admitted to the ICU after hearing that Ms. Wu was harassed.

This is not the first time that Ms. Wu has been targeted for her faith. She had previously been arrested nine times and tortured. The torture left her paralyzed for more than half a year; her arm was permanently paralyzed.

Full article: https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2021/9/12/195031.html