(Minghui.org) Four residents in Yueyang City, Hunan Province were targeted in the “Zero-out” campaign in the past two months for their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline also known as Falun Dafa that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
The harassment campaign was launched by the Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) earlier this year as a coordinated effort to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklists to renounce their faith.
In the past two decades, the PLAC, an extra-judiciary agency overseeing the public security and judiciary branches, has played a major role in orchestrating and executing persecution policies against Falun Gong.
Nine people, including police officers, residential committee staff members and agents of the 610 Office, an extralegal agency created specifically to persecute Falun Gong, went to Ms. Zhang Lihong’s home at around 9 a.m. on November 9, 2020. They demanded that Ms. Zhang sign a statement to renounce Falun Gong, so that they could remove her from their practitioners' list.
Ms. Zhang urged the officers not to participate in the persecution, as justice would be held one day. One officer blamed her for being too serious with her faith and didn’t know how to compromise.
She told the officers that after she was arrested earlier this year in March 2020, she felt extremely cold after being taken to the local detention center. She felt like she was falling into an ice bucket and her heartbeat became slower and slower. She said she was so close to death, but at that moment, she recited the auspicious phrases “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance is good.” Then she began to warm up and fell asleep. By the next morning, she was completely normal again.
She said to the officers, “For such a wonderful practice, there is no way for me to give it up.”
The officers returned again on December 2 and asked her not to practice Falun Gong anymore. They left after taking a picture of her.
Since August 2020, the local police and residential committee staff members kept coming and knocking on Ms. Guo Naiqi’s door to harass her.
On November 3, two police officers came and called her. After she refused to talk to them, they arrested her when she went to visit a friend. She was brought to the city government to meet with a 610 Office director. That director didn’t say much and let her go home soon after.
The city officials harassed her again on November 9. She insisted that she didn’t violate any law in practicing Falun Gong and asked them to stop harassing her. They left after staying there for a few minutes.
For two days in a row, on December 2 and 3, the police knocked on Ms. Fu Fanggui and Ms. Fang Yuee’s doors on both mornings and afternoons to harass them. After both practitioners refused to open the door for the police, they stayed outside of their homes for a while on the lookout for them.
Yueyang City, Hunan Province: 9 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested and 2 Harassed in Two Weeks