(Minghui.org) A Dongying City, Shandong Province, resident was arrested with her granddaughter by four plainclothes officers on September 27, 2022. The little girl was terrified and held in custody for a few hours, before being picked up by her father. The grandmother remains in custody and is now facing prosecution for mailing a letter with information about Falun Gong to a friend.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Wang Ying, 58, works as a janitor in a residential area. She was arrested at home on September 27 by four officers from Yucheng City, about 160 miles from Dongying. Her home was ransacked. Her granddaughter was taken away by the local police in Dongying. The police claimed that they arrested her because she mailed a letter to a friend about Falun Gong. It’s not clear whether the police intercepted the letter or her friend reported her.
When Ms. Wang’s son, Mr. Li Long, came home around lunchtime, he was shocked to find that his mother and daughter were gone. He called the police and three officers from the Chaoyang Police Station came in 15 minutes. They told Mr. Li that Ms. Wang was arrested by the police in Yucheng, but refused to provide further information. They left soon after.
Worried about his mother and daughter, Mr. Li went to the police station in the afternoon. An officer directed him to Ren Anyuan, the director of the Domestic Security Office. When Mr. Li called Ren, the latter refused to reveal Ms. Wang’s whereabouts or the identities of those four plainclothes officers. Ren asked Mr. Li to come pick up his daughter.
Mr. Li soon went to the Haibin Police Department and found Ren. This time, Ren said that Ms. Wang would be held in Dezhou City Detention Center and officers from the Yucheng City Police Department is who arrested her. (Yucheng City is under the jurisdiction of Dezhou City.)
After Mr. Li took his daughter home, he asked the girl what had happened during the arrest and she said, “Grandma was taken away by the bad guys.”
Due to the local pandemic lockdown, Mr. Li had to apply for permission to go to Yucheng City to look for his mother. On the evening of September 29, Ren, the director of the Domestic Security Office, Wang Huaan, the chief of Chaoyang Police Station, and Bi Liguo, the appeals office director of Gudao Town Oil Production Plant that Mr. Li worked for, came to his home and pressured him to cancel the trip. They also arranged for people to stay outside of Mr. Li’s home to monitor him.
Mr. Li recently learned that the Yucheng City Domestic Security Office has submitted his mother’s case to the Yucheng City Procuratorate on October 21, with the charge of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong.
Before taking up Falun Gong, Ms. Wang suffered all kinds to ailments from head to toe, including severe peeling skin, eye degeneration, rheumatoid arthritis, headache, digestive problem, and low blood pressure. Only two months after she took up Falun Gong in 1996, she recovered.
Because Ms. Wang refused to renounce Falun Gong in the face of persecution, she was arrested on June 1, 2008, and June 21, 2009, for talking to people about Falun Gong. She was given one year and nine months at Wangcun Forced Labor Camp following her 2009 arrest.
Ms. Wang was arrested again on July 15, 2021, after the police suspected her of putting up a Falun Gong banner in May of that year. Her home was ransacked. Although she was released soon after, the police arrested her again on August 25 for interrogation and gave her 15 days of detention on November 6, 2021.
Mother Arrested for Displaying a Banner, Son Detained for Supporting Her