(Minghui.org) A 62-year-old resident of Jiaozhou City, Shandong Province, remains in detention after she was arrested on March 22, 2024 for practicing Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Following her arrest, Ms. Zhou Minglan’s husband went to the Madian Police Station to demand her release. The police gave him a copy of his wife’s one-month criminal detention notice issued by the Jiaozhou City Police Department.
Ms. Zhou, however, was not released after one month. The police instead took her to the Qingdao City Detention Center (located in Pudong Town, Jimo District). Qingdao oversees Jiaozhou City. The authorities have not provided any update about her case status.
Life Transformed by Falun Gong, But Jailed for Upholding Her Faith
Ms. Zhou took up Falun Gong in December 2009 and soon recovered from her Hepatitis B, stomach disease, rheumatism, gynecological diseases, and breast hyperplasia. The leg injuries she sustained after falling from a high place at work in October 2008 were also healed. She no longer needed crutches. Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance helped her realize that she was also partially at fault for the dissolution of her marriage. She took the initiative to reconcile with her ex-husband. They remarried and their son was overjoyed that their once broken family was whole again.
The family, who lived in Sichuan Province at the time, moved to Jiaozhou City, Shandong Province in 2017. Not long after they settled in their new place, officers from the Madian Police Station attempted to arrest her on August 2, 2017. She was not home so the police held her son in custody for one day. She was forced to live away from home for a period of time, but was arrested on March 10, 2019, by officers from the Ligezhuang Police Station in Jiaozhou City.
During the interrogation at the police station, Ms. Zhou refused to sign her name on a prepared interrogation record. The police wrapped her inside a window curtain and one of the officers slammed her head against the wall several times. This caused pain that persisted for more than four days. The police kept telling her, “If you still don’t cooperate with us, we will just bury you alive.”
The police took Ms. Zhou to a room without surveillance cameras that evening, and ordered her to kneel down. She refused and was shoved to the ground. Her left knee was severely injured.
Ms. Zhou argued that there is no law in China that says practicing Falun Gong is illegal. Falun Gong teaches people to be good. One officer slapped her face with his shoe. He and some others forced her to press her fingerprints on the interrogation record they prepared.
The police didn’t provide her with any food or drink from the time of her arrest at 9:00 a.m. on March 10, 2019, to the time she was taken to the Qingdao City Detention Center the next evening. She was given only some water when she was unable to talk from excessive thirst while undergoing a physical examination prior to being admitted to the detention center.
The police submitted the case against Ms. Zhou to the Huangdao District Procuratorate in Qingdao City on April 25, 2019. She was indicted on July 12 and stood trial on September 18 that year. Judge Wang Decheng asked if she admitted her “guilt” in practicing Falun Gong and she said she broke no law in exercising her constitutional right to freedom of belief. Her lawyer also defended her innocence. Her husband, who served as her non-lawyer defender, submitted his written defense statement.
The judge sentenced Ms. Zhou to one year and two months in prison with a 3,000-yuan fine later on. She remained at the Qingdao City Detention Center after her wrongful conviction and was released in May 2020.
Related Report:
Police Beat Falun Gong Practitioner and Threaten to Bury Her Alive
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