(Minghui.org) Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Zhang Yuzhuo from Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, was sentenced to ten years in prison by officials of the Shuangta District Court in April 2014. She had already been held for about seven months.
Wang Mingyu, the former Party secretary of Chaoyang City, insisted that practitioners get severe punishments. Under his direction, police chief Li Chao called a meeting in August 2013 and gave orders that Falun Gong practitioners be dealt with harshly and given heavy sentences. Wang also ordered the city police department to “plan carefully, attack forcefully, and do it effectively but quietly.”
Previously, the Shuangta District Court sentenced practitioners Ms. Sun Baoying to seven years and Ms. Chen Guilan to four years in prison.
To meet the arrest quotas set by the Chaoyang Police Department, officers from the Traffic Division of arrested Ms. Zhang at the Central Market on September 18, 2013. Several officers then went to her home and ransacked it, confiscating a large number of Falun Gong books and her personal belongings.
The police held Ms. Zhang in the detention center. To show their enthusiasm, they finished their investigation and turned the case over to the Chaoyang Procuratorate within seven days. The procuratorate gave the case priority and established a “review committee” and approved the arrest on September 27, 2013. The case was returned to the Traffic Division for more supporting materials on September 30 and was finally brought to trial in April 2014.
Not long after Ms. Zhang's arrest, Traffic Division officers arrested two more practitioners in Wujiawa to make up their quota. The detention center refused to accept one of them for health reasons. The other was threatened with five years in prison in order to extort a large amount of money from her. The police went to her home and ransacked it twice when her family wasn't home. They stole many valuable items, even her daughter's jewelry. Her angry family members were in anguish over the situation.
