Elderly Man in His Late 70s Dies After Two Decades of Harassment

(Minghui.org) After enduring two decades of constant arrests and harassment for practicing Falun Gong, a Jilin City, Jilin Province resident passed away on August 11, 2020.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

While Mr. Dong Qingyou’s family was still mourning his passing, the local police and residential committee staff members harassed them three times, on April 2, June 17 and 18, 2021, respectively.

Below is the recap of the persecution against Mr. Dong and his family.

Mr. Dong was the chief engineer at the Jilin City Planning Institute before he retired. His wife, Ms. Liu Shunxiang, worked at the Jilin Province Biological Products Factory. In the 1990s, they took up Falun Gong and quickly saw their heart disease, stomach problem, and other conditions with their shoulder and neck disappear.

After the communist regime ordered the persecution in 1999, Wang Shuwen, an officer of the Zhanqian Police Station, constantly harassed Mr. Dong at home and at his workplace and ordered him to write statements to renounce Falun Gong. Mr. Dong refused to comply. Officer Wang also arrested and detained his daughter, Ms. Dong Fang, for her faith in Falun Gong. Around the same time, Ms. Liu went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong, only to be arrested and taken back to Jilin.

Since then, the police have never stopped harassing the family. The elderly couple were forced to live away from home for years.

Wang and a group of officers deceived the couple into opening the door on July 12, 2001. Ms. Liu was scared and fainted, but the police still arrested her and Mr. Dong, who had just returned home from work. Many of the couple’s personal belongings were confiscated.

The police claimed that the director of the residential committee living on the seventh floor in the same apartment building reported the couple after seeing Falun Gong flyers in the hallway. But the director denied having ever reported the couple.

Terrified by the arrest, home raid and subsequent interrogation, Mr. Dong suffered a medical episode and the police only allowed his family to take him to the hospital after extorting 3,000 yuan from them.

The couple decided to live away from home to hide from the police. In 2003, Liu Yixin of the Zhanqian Police Station found their daughter and ordered her to reveal her parents’ whereabouts. Ms. Dong refused to comply and scolded the police for the persecution.

On November 12, 2008, Mr. Dong and his wife accompanied Ms. Feng Fengyun to the Yinmahe Forced Labor Camp to visit her son Mr. Li Wenjun, who was serving a 15-month term for practicing Falun Gong. While waiting outside of the labor camp, the couple were arrested and taken to a detention facility.

The police initially told the couple’s family that they would release them in a few days. But when their family returned to the police station to demand their release a few days later, the police accused the couple of going to the labor camp to cause trouble and also threatened to arrest their family.

Although the police later released Mr. Dong after he developed a life-threatening condition, they kept coming back to harass him.

More than ten police officers, including Sun Tiegang and Chen of the Zhanqian Police Station and Huo of the Jilin City Domestic Security Office, came to arrest the couple again on April 25, 2009. When they refused to open the door, the police kicked the door open. The couple’s laptop, DVD burner, some blank discs, electronic books, MP4 and cellphones were confiscated. The police dragged Mr. Dong on the ground while taking him to the police car. His hand was injured and he suffered a heart attack.

The police claimed that they arrested Mr. Dong this time because he helped another local Falun Gong practitioner, who has disability in her legs, move a month ago.

Police left a mess at the couple’s home following the raid

Fearing the persecution, the couple lived away from home again after Mr. Dong was released. Officers Sun and Chen kept calling their family and asked for their whereabouts.

After the couple later returned home, four plainclothes officers, including Yang Yonggang of the Dongshi Police Station, knocked on their door on June 12, 2017. Ms. Liu refused to open the door for them.

The police harassed their daughter again on August 18, 2017 and the couple on September 2, 2019.

The long term harassment rendered Mr. Dong, who was already nearly 80, unable to live a peaceful life. Even after he passed away, the police still harassed his family for their shared faith in Falun Gong.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Changyi District Police Department: [phone]Police officer of Zhanqian Police Station: [phone]Zhanqian Police Station: [phone], [phone]Yang Yonggang (杨永刚), police officer: [phone], [phone]Du Yongming (杜永明), police officer: [phone]Wang Faming (王发明), police officer: [phone]Zhanqian Residential Committee: [phone]

Related reports:

Police in Jilin City Arrest Practitioners, Family Demands Result in their Release

Jilin Province Police Arrest Practitioners, Ransack Their Homes