(Minghui.org) The police in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province traveled about 1,000 miles to Chongqing to harass a woman in her 70s, after intercepting a letter she mailed to a local prosecutor, urging him not to take part in the persecution of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Lei Changrong was walking on the street at around 2 p.m. on June 2, 2021, when eight police officers stopped her. One officer asked her, “Are you Lei Changrong? Show your ID and follow us to the police station.”
Ms. Lei replied that she didn’t have her ID with her and she demanded to see the IDs of the police officers. The two in police uniform quickly showed theirs and said they were from a local police station in Chongqing. The other six, who were in plainclothes, said they were part of the Suzhou City Police Department.
The police pushed Ms. Lei into a police car and took her to the police station. Ms. Lei requested to write down the police officers’ names and their badge numbers. They refused to give out the information and said, “It is us who are questioning you. Now you are asking us questions.”
Another person said, “I’m from the Shiqiao Residential Committee. You mailed a letter to me and it has several pages.” Ms. Lei denied having mailed any letter to the committee. She asked that person to show her the letter and he couldn’t.
“So you are from the residential committee? We elected you to serve the community. Did we put you in the position to persecute us?” Ms. Lei asked that man. Upon hearing this, he turned around and left.
Ms. Lei wrote down how the police stopped her on the street and arrested her. Before she finished, the police took away her notes. She asked for the notes back, but they refused.
Ms. Lei was then brought to the interrogation room. The police officers from Suzhou took out a letter and asked her, “Did you mail this?”
She asked for the officers’ names and police badge numbers. They refused initially, but later relented after she said she would report them.
The police showed Ms. Lei a video clip of her walking back home after mailing the letter. It also had a close-up of her door plate. The letter was mailed to Zhang Neng, a prosecutor of the Wujiang District Procuratorate in Suzhou. The police also showed photos of three Chongqing Falun Gong practitioners on their cellphones and asked Ms. Lei whether she knew them.
When Ms. Lei refused to answer any of the police’s questions, they said, “We only came to you after we’ve gathered enough information about you.”
“Does mailing a letter violate the law?” she asked.
“It doesn’t. But the letter had content about Falun Gong.” The police said that she violated Article 300 of the Criminal Law, which has been misused by the authorities to frame and criminalize Falun Gong practitioners during the past 22 years of persecution.
Ms. Lei refuted that no law criminalizes Falun Gong in China and that it’s also not on the government’s list of cults. Additionally, the Chinese publication bureau has revoked the ban on Falun Gong literature. She denied any wrongdoing in mailing the letter.
After the interrogation, the Suzhou police went to Ms. Lei’s home to search it. They tried to take pictures, but were stopped by her. A desktop calendar and several cards with information about Falun Gong were confiscated.
The police then brought Ms. Lei back to the police station and asked her to sign the search warrant and bail release document. She refused to sign anything, maintaining that she didn’t do anything wrong.
“The bail release is already the lightest punishment, or we can put you on criminal detention.” the police threatened her.
Ms. Lei said again that she didn’t do anything wrong and she asked the police not to harass her again. The Suzhou police responded, “If you still go out or tell your fellow practitioners, or send information overseas, there will be people coming and talking to you again.”
Ms. Lei returned home with her daughter at around 2 a.m.
She went back to the police station on the next morning and tried to get her notes about the arrest. The officer who received her said the notes had been taken away by the Suzhou police, and he warned Ms. Lei again not to send information to Minghui or she would be in trouble.
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