(Minghui.org) Ms. Tai Hui, a Mengla County, Yunnan Province, resident, was arrested on September 4, 2019, and sentenced to one year on July 22, 2020, for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
She recounts the persecution in the past year below.
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Arrest and Home-ransacking
I was home with my mother and two other Falun Gong practitioners on September 4, 2019, when the police suddenly knocked on the door around noon. As soon as I opened the door, four officers rushed inside.
A middle-aged male officer who looked like a director asked me, “Have you closed your shoe store?”
I replied, “My mother’s mental state isn’t very stable. She often got lost when she went out. There has to be someone here to take care of her. So I closed my store.”
I did have a store in the neighborhood. But it had been a year since I sold it. I didn’t how they knew about my store.
As we were talking, one officer walked around and took pictures of my home. I tried to stop him, but that director said, “We are from the Juhua Police Station. We have the search warrant. Do you want to sign it?”
Before I answered him, he said to himself, “I knew you wouldn’t.”
Another five officers came and searched my home. When I tried to block them from entering my bedroom, one officer pushed me aside. Then I went to take my purse, as my cellphone was in it, but the director snatched my purse and didn’t allow me to make phone calls.
None of these officers were in police uniform or showed their IDs. My mother was terrified and didn’t know what to do. I warned them, “You can’t scare my mother.”
The director said to me, “If you don’t want us to harm your mother, you’d better stay there and don’t move.”
I sat on the sofa next to my mother. They took pictures of me.
They raided my home for more than one hour and didn’t show me any list of confiscated items. My two laptops and my mother’s media player were taken away.
The two practitioners who were at my home were also arrested and detained for one day. When the police tried to take me away, my mother followed me to the door. It broke my heart to see her eyes, which looked so lonely and helpless. I didn’t dare to look at her again, or I wouldn’t be able to control my emotion. I said to the police, “I will sue you if anything happens to my mother.”
After my father passed away in August 2013 because of the persecution, my mother suffered a mental breakdown. Since then, she has been living with me and relying on me to take care of her. My arrest and imprisonment dealt another blow to her.
As we went downstairs, I asked that director loudly why they arrested me. He said to me, “Can you lower your voice?”
“What are you afraid of? Why do I have to lower my voice?” I asked.
He didn’t continue the conversation but said he would talk to me at the police station.
It was about 2 p.m. when we arrived at the police station. Four officers forcibly took my fingerprints. They didn’t provide me with any food until I was sent to the Kunming City Detention Center at 4 p.m. on the next day.
Wrongful Sentence
I was detained at the Kunming City Detention Center for over ten months. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Wuhua District Court postponed my hearing until July 2020. I attended the hearing at the detention center through a video conference. The audio device was very poor and I couldn’t hear at all what was said by the judge and prosecutor. I complained twice about it, but to no avail. The judge quickly adjourned the hearing in ten minutes, without even giving my lawyer a chance to defend me.
I wrote a complaint letter after the hearing and asked guard Xiao to mail it for me. Xiao said that the judge only adjourned the hearing and that he might have another hearing scheduled. Xiao warned that it may not do me any good if I submitted my complaint letter now. I listened to her and gave up on filing the complaint.
But a few days later, I received a letter from the court that indicated that they wouldn’t hold any more hearings and that the judge would announce my verdict in a few days.
During my one-year detention, the police came several times to interrogate me. Every time they came, I just told them that Falun Gong is good and it’s wrong for them to persecute my faith. I never signed the interrogation record.
On the day when I was released, the guards asked me to sign the release notice. I also refused and said to them, “I’ve never violated any law.”
The guards tried to scare me that they wouldn’t release me if I didn’t sign the document. As my sister had come to take me home, a guard asked her to sign the notice for me. After that, I was released.
Upon returning home, my older sister told me that our mother’s health declined quickly in the past year. She was still able to handle the basic daily activities herself before, but now, she is completely incapacitated and couldn’t eat on her own. My second sister had to retire early to take care of our mother.
On the day of my release, I also went to the Juhua Police Station and demanded that the police return my computer and printer. I was directed to the Guandu District Domestic Security Office. When I went there, I saw the person who arrested me. I asked for his name on the day of my arrest, and he replied, “You don’t have to know.” This time, he still refused to tell me his name. After I asked around, I found his name was Jiang Yinguang.
When I asked him to return my personal items, he threatened to harass me and terminate the lease of my government-owned apartment.
I submitted a motion to reconsider my case to the Kunming City Intermediate Court. I also filed a complaint with the local appeals office but was told that it’s no use for me to file a complaint with them. They said that the police didn’t have to return my personal belongings and the court didn’t have the say on it either. So my complaint didn’t go anywhere.
I wrote another complaint letter against the police and submitted to the Kunming City Procuratorate. They refused to accept it because I’m a Falun Gong practitioner.
Related reports:
Many Practitioners Arrested in Mengla County
Ms. Tai Hui from Yunnan Province Secretly Sentenced to Four-year Term
