(Minghui.org) A Dashiqiao City resident faces indictment for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime.
Mr. Liu Qingyu was walking down the street on June 28, 2016, when several officers came out of nowhere and seized him. They body searched him and confiscated the 1,830 yuan of cash he planned to use for some personal business.
Mr. Liu’s lawyer requested that his case be dismissed, as no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong. The police, however, proceeded to have him formally arrested in August. His case now rests with the local procuratorate, which may issue a formal indictment any time now.
Prior to his latest arrest, Mr. Liu had been given forced labor three times for his faith. His family worries about what lies in store for him and calls for his immediate release.
Three Prior Forced Labor Terms
Mr. Liu was first arrested on December 5, 1999 and had his home ransacked that night.
During the interrogation, officer Li Jinsheng took off Mr. Liu’s pants and held him down. A few officers used metal bars to strike his buttocks and legs until he passed out. When he came to, a deputy chief named Zhang Maojie punched him in the head for more than 30 minutes.
Mr. Liu was next transferred to Dashiqiao Detention Center, where he was forced to do hard labor without pay for long hours every day. He was given two years of forced labor six months later.
The police kept harassing Mr. Liu at home after his release. He was forced to live away from home, but was seized at a bus station in 2004. The police sent him to a labor camp, where he was incarcerated for half a year. Every day he was forced to watch propaganda videos slandering Falun Gong.
Mr. Liu was arrested again on May 4, 2008 and given one year of forced labor. The guards at Masanjia Labor Camp only gave him a meager amount of food to eat every day. In the meantime, they forced him to work for extended periods of time, allowing him only a couple of hours of sleep every night.
The police took him out of the labor camp on August 7, 2008 and conducted a marathon interrogation session in the police department. They shocked him with electric batons intermittently from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. They shocked his fingers, toes, and penis. His big toe nails fell off as a result.
The police next kept him at Heicheng City Detention Center for one month before moving him back to the labor camp. He was abused to the point of losing half of his body weight.
He wasn’t released until 2009, only to be arrested again 7 years later.
