(Minghui.org) A 64-year-old woman in Wuhan City was taken into custody on April 13, 2018 and is now being held at a police-affiliated hospital.
The latest arrest of Ms. Huang Hongyan, a retiree of the Dongxihu District Power Authority, stemmed from her earlier arrest on June 3, 2015 for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime.
Ms. Huang was released on bail two weeks after her arrest in 2015. The local police had attempted to keep her detained, but the local detention center declined to take her, citing her severe diabetes.
The police never loosened their grip on Ms. Huang. She was issued a formal arrest warrant on September 14, 2015. The police called her numerous times afterwards, asking her to visit them to sign some documents related to the indictment against her. She refused to comply with the demand.
Ms. Huang went to her bank around February 2018 to check the deposit status of the end-of-year bonus her employer gave each retiree. She presented her ID as requested, so that the teller could look into her account.
Two months later, on April 13, the local police showed up at her door, demanding that she go with them. She refused, and the officers threatened to handcuff her. She went with them and never returned home.
Ms. Huang's family suspects that the police must have entered her ID into their database of targeted Falun Gong practitioners following her arrest in 2015. When she used her ID for the first time since her earlier arrest, the bank knew right away that she was on the police's list and probably alerted the police.
The police only told Ms. Huang's family that they took her back into custody to finish up her case from 2015.
This is not the first time that Ms. Huang has been targeted for her faith in Falun Gong. She was sent to brainwashing centers three times between December 1999 and December 2000.
She was given one and a half years of forced labor after she was arrested again on August 5, 2002. A total of seven agents took turns interrogating her for a whole night. She had her period during that time, but wasn't given sanitary pads or allowed to use the restroom. Her blood stained the chair she sat in. When she later refused to sign the forced labor paperwork, a guard instigated an inmate to punch her in the head.
During her labor camp detention, she was once taken out to attend a brainwashing session, as the authorities felt that she didn't do a good enough job of writing statements to renounce her faith in Falun Gong.
Every time she was sent to a brainwashing center over the years, her employer was ordered to pay 50,000 yuan to cover her expenses there. Her employer, in turn, suspended her salary during each of her detentions.
