Store Owner and Mother of Two Sentenced to Four Years for Her Faith

(Minghui.org) A store owner in Dalian City, Liaoning Province was recently sentenced to four years by the Pulandian Court for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Xu Minghua has been taken to the Dalian Prison. Her two boys are longing for her return. 

Ms. Xu Minghua

Ms. Xu was arrested on July 11, 2020, together with another Falun Gong practitioner, Mr. Wang Changqing. The police pressed Ms. Xu against the floor, put a black hood on her and handcuffed her behind her back. One officer kicked her a few times. After passing the physical examination, she was taken to the Wafangdian Detention Center the next day. Her cellphone was confiscated and her store was forced to close. 

Torture reenactment: handcuffed behind one’s back

The police targeted Ms. Xu after finding out through monitoring her cellphone that she was having contact with other practitioners.

Two other practitioners, Ms. Zhang Shujie, the family tutor of Ms. Xu’s sons, and Ms. Zhai Jing, Mr. Wang’s wife, were also arrested, though both were soon released.

While Mr. Wang was also released later on, he is now facing prosecution after the police submitted his case to the Pulandian Procuratorate.

Previous Persecution of Ms. Xu

Ms. Xu, 50, took up Falun Gong in 1997 at the recommendation of her mother. She was first arrested in 1999, while on her to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong.

While Ms. Xu managed to avoid police harassment for the next decade, she was nevertheless arrested again on September 25, 2013, and sentenced to three years to the Liaoning Women’s Prison on October 21, 2014. Her employer, an electronics company, fired her in 2014 after she was sentenced for her faith. 

She opened a small store to make a living not long after being released from prison on June 24, 2016. But the police harassed her several times. They also called her brother in May 2017 and asked whether she was still practicing Falun Gong.

Ms. Xu was arrested again in 2018 after she was found to carry banknotes printed with information about Falun Gong while going through the security check at the train station. The authorities attempted to send her to a brainwashing center for further persecution, but relented at her family’s strong protest.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Mopan Police Station: [phone]Zhu (朱), police officer: [phone]Pulandian Procuratorate: [phone]Pulandian City Court: [phone]Wang Guowen (王国文), secretary of Pulandian Political and Legal Affairs Committee: [phone]Zhang Jun (张军), head of Pulandian Police Department: [phone], [phone]Song Deshuai (宋德帅), officer of Pulandian Domestic Security Office: [phone], [phone]

(More perpetrators’ contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)