(Minghui.org) A 55-year-old resident of Kunming City is facing indictment for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime.
Ms. Zhao Chenyu was arrested on August 27, 2018, shortly after she returned home from visiting her mother in her hometown of Jinghong City in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province.
The Jinghong City police suspected that she was the woman they saw in a surveillance video distributing Falun Gong materials. They chased her all the way to Kunming and held her at Kunming City Detention Center for three days before bringing her back to Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture Detention Center.
Ms. Zhao's arrest has been approved, and she faces indictment for her faith.
Her mother was so traumatized by her arrest that she became absentminded and fell. She lay on the floor for a whole day before a family member came home and helped her up. Her femoral bone was injured, and she remains hospitalized at the time of writing.
Ms. Zhao's latest ordeal was preceded by a three-year prison sentence in 2006 for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. Her employer, Kunming City 30th Middle School, fired her during her imprisonment. Her son, who was deprived of his mother's care, became a delinquent. His maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather lived in fear, and both of them passed away while his mother was in prison.
Ms. Zhao began to practice Falun Gong in 1998. She followed its principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in her life and used them to guide her students as well. Her students improved dramatically in their academics, and her class took on a completely new look.
However, in September 1999, shortly after the persecution of Falun Gong began, school officials and local police summoned her. They demanded that she give up her practice of Falun Gong and threatened her with consequences. She refused to renounce her faith. Later, she was denied a promotion, and her salary and bonus were cut. To instigate hatred from her colleagues to force her to renounce her belief, her school was stripped of its excellence award, and the year-end bonus for all the teachers and staff was cut.
Ms. Zhao was arrested on a train on February 5, 2000, while on her way to Beijing to petition the central government for the right to practice Falun Gong. Before her release, her brother, who was a high-ranking official in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, was forced to write a “guarantee letter” promising that she would not do anything related to Falun Gong. Her brother's Party membership and government position were put down as collateral. She also had 10,000 yuan extorted from her. She was released on March 17, 2000, and was forced to go back to her hometown.
In December 2001, police from Kunming called her and told her to return to Kunming. She was taken to the brainwashing center right after she landed at the Kunming airport.
Ms. Zhao was arrested again on July 29, 2005, when she was on vacation in Tibet. Her practitioner friend who was traveling with her was reported to the authorities for telling people about Falun Gong and its persecution by the Chinese Communist Party. She was arrested with her friend and sent back to Kunming. Her home was ransacked on August 26, 2005.
The Kunming Procuratorate indicted her on December 19, 2005. The Kunming Intermediate Court secretly tried her on February 10, 2006, without notifying her family. She was sentenced to three years in prison four days later.
Ms. Zhao was transferred to the Yunnan Province Second Women's Prison on April 18, 2006. She was tortured after her arrival. Inmates were ordered to monitor her around the clock. She was forced to sit still on a “small stool” from 6:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. every day. She was beaten whenever she moved. She was allowed to use the restroom only three times a day. Prison officials and guards also tried other forms of abuse to force her to renounce Falun Gong.
About six months after she was imprisoned, officials from her school came to the prison and announced that they had fired her.
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