(Clearwisdom.net) Members of the Zhaoyuan City 610 Office and officials of the affiliated brainwashing center have been using arbitrary and unlawful means to persecute practitioners for the past eight years. Since 2006, agents at these locations have repeatedly extended the practitioners' terms in the brainwashing center. Practitioners were taken there to be brutally tortured or transferred to forced labor camps or prison. Officials also took practitioners fresh off forced labor or prison terms directly to the brainwashing center for several months, sometimes longer. By doing this, the authorities are able extend the mental and physical pressure on the practitioners, ensure future funding for the center from the government, and use it as leverage to get money from the practitioners' families.

Ms. Zhao Yuhong, whose term officially ended in March 2003, had been sentenced to four years in prison. She was tortured while she was in prison. At the end of her term, her 80-year-old mother came to take her home. However, members of the Zhaoyuan City 610 Office and officers from the traffic division had already taken Ms. Zhao to the brainwashing center for an arbitrary extension of her term. Several months later, she was taken from the brainwashing center to a forced labor camp for an additional twelve months. After Ms. Zhao was at the camp for a month, her family received a notice saying that they could take her home. However, agents from the 610 Office again transferred her to the brainwashing center. In the meantime, her elderly mother, who was not in good health, had been visiting the 610 Office and the brainwashing center a dozen times to ask for her release. The officials denied her request with all kinds of excuses. Ms. Zhao Yuhong was released a year and a half later, when her physical condition had deteriorated due to continuous abuse such that she could not take care of herself.

Ms. Yang Wenjie had been unlawfully sentenced to three years of forced labor for refusing to give up her beliefs. Her term in the forced labor camp ended in February 2005, but officials at the 610 Office took her directly to the brainwashing center, where she was held for nine months. She was then sentenced to three more years of forced labor. One year later, officials from the labor camp notified her family that they could take her home, but members of the 610 Office took her to the brainwashing center once again. At the center, she was abused so brutally for six months that she almost died. Fearful that they would be held responsible for her death, officials from the brainwashing center allowed her to be taken home in February 2007.

Practitioner Yang Jinrong (gender unknown) was sentenced to prison for a term of four years, which ended in December 2006. At that point, Yang was taken directly to the brainwashing center to be detained for another month.

Ms. Xia Meifen, whose forced labor term ended this year, has also been taken to the brainwashing center by officials from the 610 Office.

The terms of three additional practitioners, Ms. Li Xiuqin, Wang Shaofa (gender unknown) and Ms. Cui Guifen, also ended recently, and they too were taken directly to the brainwashing center by people from the 610 Office.

This comprises just a small sample of the persecution carried out by the Zhaoyuan City 610 Office. In fact, almost all practitioners who were unlawfully sentenced to prison or forced labor terms were taken to the brainwashing center at the end of their terms, where they were further abused.