(Minghui.org) Ms. Li Guanping, 33, from Huazhou City, Guangdong Province, had been {illegally detained}} at the Tianhe Detention Center in Guangzhou City for 21 months for practicing Falun Gong. When she was supposed to be released, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials tried to force her to write a guarantee statement to promise to stop practicing Falun Gong. Ms. Li refused. Because of that, she was transferred to the Maoming City Brainwashing Center instead of being released.
Ms. Li's mother and two sisters came to the detention center at 8 a.m. on April 22, 2012, when Ms. Li's term was up, to take her home. However, officials at the detention center refused to process the paperwork to get her released. They also did not allow the family to see Ms. Li. In the evening, after Ms. Li's mother and sisters waited the whole day, they told the family that agents from the Huazhou 610 Office had come to the detention center, completed the required paperwork and transferred Ms. Li to a “re-education” facility in Maoming City. The detention center officials then told the family to bring clothes for Ms. Li to the Maoming Brainwashing Center,where she was being held.
Ms. Li's grandmother, who is over 100 years old, has been eagerly awaiting her return. She mentioned to everyone who she ran into that Ms. Li was being detained. The worry about her granddaughter also took a heavy toll on the elderly lady's appearance over the past two years.
Ms. Li is a resident of Maoming City, Guangdong Province. She used to work at the Zhuhai subsidiary, affiliated with China Mobil Telecom Company, where she was known to treat her customers with enthusiasm and kindness.
Ms. Li's sister was detained and persecuted at a brainwashing center in Sanshui City, Guangdong Province, in 2006 and 2007. When Ms. Li came to visit her sister in detention, because she didn't cooperate with CCP officials to pressure her sister to stop practicing Falun Gong, the Zhuhai City 610 Office agents became upset with her. They threatened her company, and as a result, her contract was not renewed. After that, she saw through CCP's irrational persecution and also began to practice Falun Gong.
In 2010, Ms. Li stayed with Ms. Kong Yujie, a practitioner from Guangzhou City. Ms. Li ran her own business. Before the Asian Games, the CCP escalated the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and human rights. On the morning of July 23, 2010, police officers broke into the women's home and ransacked it, confiscating their computers, Falun Gong books, Shen Yun Performing Arts DVDs and other personal belongings. In the afternoon, they arrested Ms. Li and Ms. Kong and took them to the Tianhe District Detention Center.
Another practitioner, Mr. Chen Chunlin, who lived nearby, was also detained at the Tianhe District Detention Center and had his home ransacked by police on the same day.
The police plotted to frame the three practitioners in order to sentence them to prison; however, their case was rejected by the Procuratorate two times. In September 2010, Mr. Chen was transferred to Guangzhou Juniors' Forced Labor Camp for further persecution.
Ms. Kong decided to protest the persecution by going on a hunger strike. She was brutally forced-fed and tortured as a result. After the news about Ms. Kong's case spread, it gained a lot of attention from practitioners in China and abroad. With their help, as well as the effort of a defense lawyer hired by Ms. Kong's family, Ms. Kong was finally released on January 19, 2011.
Ms. Li's whereabouts could not be identified for some time during this period. Fearing that Ms. Li's family members would come to demand her release, police spread the word that they had transferred Ms. Li to a forced labor camp. Later, through some kind people's help, the family learned that Ms. Li had been detained at the Tianhe Detention Center in Guangzhou instead.
