(Clearwisdom.net) Mr. Cu Zaoding, 64 years old, is a senior research scientist at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Shandong Province Science Academy. His wife, You Yufang, 61 years old, is a technical associate at a boiler-maker factory in Jinan. The Cu family lives in a dormitory affiliated with Shandong Province Science Academy at Science Academy Road in Lixia District, Jinan City.
The elderly couple started to practice Falun Dafa in 1995. They had gone to visit family members in the United States around July 20, 1999. They returned to China in July 2000 and went to Beijing to tell the government the facts about Falun Dafa. Beijing police officers arrested them and then moved them around from detention center to detention center, finally sending them back to Jinan City. The couple was detained there for another three months prior to their release. They did not get back to their own home until the end of December 2000, even though they had returned to China in July. Ever since their return to China, their lives have been filled with disruptions from the police and other persecutors following Jiang Zemin's orders. Police from the Science Academy Road station in Lixia District, and Jinan City police and representatives from their local Street Office on Science Academy Road and the Science Academy, have all worked together to make the couple's lives miserable.
Mr. Cu was held in the local police station at Science Academy Road for more than a week and suffered inhumane torture. The police abused Mr. Cu, a high-ranking scientist, with extreme and brutal torture. They stripped off all his clothes and shocked the sensitive parts of his body with electrodes until he was close to death. His body was covered in black and blue marks. Someone later took him home for monitoring.
Despite all of this, Mr. Cu and his wife were persistent in telling people they met along the way the facts about Falun Dafa and the persecution. Living a normal daily life and making ends meet became almost impossible for them. They had to endure several searches of their personal belongings and were subjected to extortion in the form of huge fines. In addition, the police compelled their work units to freeze their retirement pensions. Even in such dire financial circumstances, the couple used some of the money their relatives had given them to make and distribute Dafa truth-clarification information.
During the first half of 2002, they were forced to leave their home when they realized that the police would arrest them again and take them to a brainwashing center. In November 2002, they were arrested while they were clarifying the truth about Falun Gong in public. Tianqiao District Court sentenced Mr. Cu and his wife to eight years in prison each without following any due legal process.