(Minghui.org) For Mr. Jia Guojie’s mother, the recent Mid-Autumn Festival (which fell on September 21) was especially lonely. Six days before the traditional holiday for family reunion, her son was arrested again for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
In the past two decades, the elderly mother has witnessed first-hand the persecution against Falun Gong. She said she couldn’t even remember how many times her son was arrested. When the persecution first started, he was still in his late 20s and had just started his career as a doctor. As he held firm to his faith in Falun Gong, he lost his job and has been sentenced three times, totaling eleven years. The constant worry about his safety took a toll on the health of his father and grandmother, who both passed away prematurely.
Taking Up Falun Gong
Mr. Jia is native of Jishan County, Shanxi Province. He was born with very poor health. He almost died from a severe liver disease when he was a few months old. After he started middle school, the school dorm didn’t have heating in the winter, causing him to develop rheumatic joint disease. In 1995, he was introduced to Falun Gong. Shortly into the practice, his rheumatic heart disease and chronic stomach pain both disappeared.
When he graduated from Guangzhou First Military Medical University in Guangdong Province in 1998, most of his classmates bribed the school to be assigned to hospitals in big cities or stay in Guangzhou. Even some good friends fought with each other and no longer talked to each other. Mr. Jia didn’t fight for anything and was assigned a job in a military hospital in a remote region in Xinjiang Province.
Mr. Jia was given an 800 yuan reward for going to the remote region. He donated 600 yuan to a man who couldn’t afford the baby delivery cost for his wife and another 200 yuan to a disaster relief fund.
Three Prison Sentences
With the onset of the persecution, as Mr. Jia refused to renounce Falun Gong, he was fired by the hospital and forced to demobilize from the military in June 2000.
He went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong on July 20, 2000, only to be arrested and detained for three months.
Mr. Jia went back to Guangzhou after he was released. For distributing informational materials at the Guangzhou First Military Medical University and mailing letters to his former workplace in Xinjiang in December 2000, he was arrested and later sentenced to three years by the Baiyun District Court in Guangzhou.
When he traveled to his hometown in Jishan County, Shanxi Province on November 16, 2004, the railroad police searched his bag and arrested him upon discovering a copy of Falun Gong book and ten booklets. He was sentenced to a five-year term by the Jishan County Court.
Mr. Jia was arrested again by officers of Jishan County Domestic Security Office in November 2015 and sentenced to three years by the Jishan County Court on August 29, 2016.
Latest Harassment and Arrest
The authorities continued to harass Mr. Jia after he was released. In November 2020, while he had gone out of town to work, the police summoned his mother, who is in her 70s, to the home of village head Zhang Hongyi and questioned her on his whereabouts. Although the elderly woman had stopped practicing Falun Gong herself years ago, she was also forced to sign a statement, promising that she wouldn’t practice it again.
Upon learning that Mr. Jia was working in a hospital in Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, the Jishan police went to Xi’an in late 2020 and pretended to be patients to collect information about Mr. Jia.
Guo Tiashan, the deputy head of Yuncheng City Domestic Security Office, Ren, the director of Jishan County 610 Office, township secretary, village secretary and a few police officers found Mr. Jia in Xi’an on July 30, 2021 and ordered him to attend a brainwashing session in a hotel after work.
Guo tried to persuade him, “If we arrest you at your workplace, you will lose your job. If we arrest you at your apartment, your landlord will evict you. We are (doing you a favor by) wearing plainclothes. You must come to the hotel for the classes.”
After Mr. Jia refused to comply, Guo threatened to treat him as “a key target.”
Mr. Jia was arrested at work on September 15. He is now detained incommunicado and the authorities refused to reveal to his mother his whereabouts.
Brainwashing Sessions Hosted by the Shanxi Authorities
Since September 2020, the Shanxi Province Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-judiciary agency tasked with overseeing the persecution, has ordered the local authorities in Yuncheng City, which oversees Jishan County, to go after every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist and check whether they still practice it.
A month later, the authorities in Yuncheng began to harass local practitioners and take them to newly-organized brainwashing sessions.
In a new session on the top floor of a hotel started in mid-March 2021, Guo gave lectures to several practitioners. He also recorded the lectures to be included in his work performance and collected expensive tuition from the practitioners. He threatened the practitioners not to report it to Minghui, saying, “We have direct access to Minghui. We know everything you submit to them.”
By the end of June 2021, at least 17 practitioners in Yuncheng have been harassed, including Xu Liancai, Zhang Rongxian, Jing Shuncai, Zheng Zhiyuan, Hou Shengzhu, Zhao Ruiying, Wu Genyi, Jing Jiaoqian, Chen Zhimin, Huang Hongju, Song Zhixuan, Dong Hongbing, Wu Aiye, Liu Liping, Liu Liru, Zhang Suzhen and Niu Xiaoyue. Among them, Chen Zhimin passed away in April 2021.
Nine of the practitioners, including Xu Liancai, Zhang Rongxian, Hou Shengzhu, Jing Shuncai, Niu Xiaoyue, Wu Aiye, Liu Liping, Liu Liru, Zhang Suzhen, were held in brainwashing centers.
Perpetrators’ contact information:
Guo Tieshan (郭铁山), deputy head of Yuncheng City Domestic Security Office: +86-15343598644, +86-13934870398Fan Hongye (樊红业), deputy head of Yanhu District Domestic Security Office: +86-18935088062Liu Wenhua (刘文华), secretary of Yuncheng City Political and Legal Affairs Committee
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