(Minghui.org) A 42-year-old woman was arrested at an airport in Fushun City, Liaoning Province, on August 24, 2020, before boarding a flight at 2:30 p.m. to visit her twin sons in Shanghai.
Ms. Cao Yueling’s arrest came about 1.5 years after she finished serving a 4.5-year term for her faith in Falun Gong. The arrest also happened three months after Ms. Cao's 71-year-old mother was released from a three-year term, also for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
The police took Ms. Cao to her mother’s residence in Fushun, where she temporarily stayed, and ransacked it. Many of her Falun Gong books and materials were confiscated. She is now held in an unknown detention facility in Xinbin County.
The police also attempted to arrest Ms. Cao’s mother, Ms. Chen Yan, but were stopped by Ms. Cao’s father.
Ms. Cao suddenly fell ill in 2000. She became very weak and had trouble sleeping at night. She also experienced tremendous hair loss and her eyes started bulging. Life became a struggle for her.
Three months after Ms. Cao learned Falun Gong in 2004, her condition disappeared. She got married and gave birth to twin boys.
Because of practicing her faith, Ms. Cao was arrested on November 5, 2012. During the six-month period she was detained, her husband was extorted for more than 10,000 yuan by the authorities in exchange for her release.
When she returned home on May 22, 2013, after being given three years of probation, Ms. Cao was emaciated, with severe hair loss.
Meanwhile, her husband, a military officer in the prime of his career, was implicated by the communist government. His supervisor first stopped everything he was doing and later suggested that he apply for demobilization. Unable to bear the pressure, he divorced Ms. Cao in October 2014. Ms. Cao was given custody of their two sons.
Ms. Cao was arrested again on April 2, 2015 for handing out information about Falun Gong. Her sons were left at home alone. The police also ordered her landlord to terminate her lease.
Ms. Cao was interrogated at the detention center. Her health quickly declined and she was hospitalized.
The Huangpu District Procuratorate later indicted Ms. Cao and moved her case to the Huangpu District Court. She was sentenced to 4.5 years on March 25, 2016.
While Ms. Cao was incarcerated, her mother, Ms. Chen Yan, went to Shanghai to help take care of her grandsons, who were 11 at that time, only to be arrested twice herself, on October 14, 2015 and December 16, 2016, respectively, for distributing Falun Gong materials. She was detained 15 days after both arrests.
Ms. Chen went back to her own home in Fushun City, Liaoning Province after she was released in late December 2016, but was arrested again on May 11, 2017 after being reported for talking to people about Falun Gong.
After the police failed to extort 50,000 yuan from her family, they submitted Ms. Chen’s case to the Fushun County Procuratorate on June 28, 2017.
Ms. Chen appeared in court on April 11, 2018. Her lawyer entered a not guilty plea for her. She also testified in her own defense and talked about how practicing Falun Gong improved her health and morality. The judge later sentenced her to three years in Liaoning Women’s Prison.
After Ms. Cao was released in March 2019, she moved to her hometown in Fushun and asked her ex-husband to help take care of their sons in Shanghai.
A year later, Ms. Chen was also released, on May 10, 2020. Only three months after the family reunited, Ms. Cao was arrested again.
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