(Minghui.org) A Shenyang City, Liaoning Province resident was imprisoned on July 1, 2021, to serve a two-year term for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Dong Mei, 51, is now held at the “Correction Ward” of Liaoning Women’s Prison and denied family visits.
Her mother, Ms. Zhang Yun, 77, has also been convicted for her shared faith. It’s not clear whether the older woman, who is blind in one eye and has poor vision in the other eye, has been transferred to prison or is still held at the local detention center.
The mother-daughter duo was arrested on December 4, 2019, and held at the Shenyang City Detention Center. It’s reported that the police monitored them for a long time before arresting them. While Ms. Zhang was released after 16 days of detention, Ms. Dong remained in custody and was later sentenced to two years by the Shenhe District Court on October 28, 2020.
Ms. Zhang was arrested two more times, on March 12 and August 20, 2020. She was released the next day but was placed on residential surveillance home both times.
A group of officers descended upon Ms. Zhang’s home at around 7 a.m. on December 23. She didn’t open the door at that time but later relented when the officers came back at 10 a.m. This time, the officers took her to the hospital for a coronavirus test. They also told her that she had been scheduled to appear in court the next day. The police initially attempted to keep her at the police station overnight, but later allowed her to go home after getting instruction from their supervisor.
Ms. Zhang appeared in the Yuhong District Court at 9 a.m. on December 24. None of her family members or her lawyer attended her hearing. She was taken back into custody at Shenyang City No.1 Detention Center afterward.
Ms. Dong is an accountant. She took up Falun Gong in 1996 and credits the practice for curing her skin disease. She lives by Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance, and refused to make false accounting records, like many of her colleagues do. One of her managers once said to her, “As long as I’m working here, I hope you also stay and not seek other opportunities.”
With the onset of the persecution in 1999, Ms. Dong was arrested multiple times and served two years at Longshan Forced Labor Camp between 2001 and 2003.
The labor camp guards forced her to stand with both hands up against a wall for long hours. They shocked her with an electric baton when she couldn’t keep her arms up because of fatigue. The guards also grabbed her hair and hit her head against the wall and dragged her around barefoot on the concrete floor until her ankle bone was exposed.
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