(Minghui.org) A 69-year-old woman in Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, was arrested on February 5, 2025, for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Yuan Hongying’s family went to Harbin City in the same province on a Chinese New Year holiday vacation. As they were waiting for their return train in Harbin on February 5, two officers demanded to search Ms. Yuan’s luggage. When she explained that her family had already passed the security checks, the officers said they had to search her bag because she practiced Falun Gong.

Ms. Yuan refused to cooperate. The police called for five more officers, who took both Ms. Yuan and her daughter to the police station and searched their bags. After finding Ms. Yuan in possession of a few currency bills with “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good” written on them, the police said this was evidence that Ms. Yuan had violated the law and began to interrogate her.

The police seized Ms. Yuan’s and her daughter’s keys, went to Qiqihar (about 200 miles away), and raided their respective homes when no other family members were present. They released Ms. Yuan’s daughter when they didn’t find any Falun Gong items in her home. They found Falun Gong materials in Ms. Yuan’s home, so they interrogated her late into the evening. She had a severe headache and high blood pressure due to lack of sleep. She was taken to the Harbin City Second Detention Center around 3 a.m. on February 6 and has been held there ever since.

This isn’t the first time that Ms. Yuan has been targeted for her faith, which she started to pratice in 1996 and credits for helping her to recover from her heart condition, asthma, and cholecystitis. Because she refused to give up Falun Gong after the persecution started in 1999, she was repeatedly arrested and detained.

Ms. Yuan was arrested in 2001 and detained for 40 days. She was arrested again by officers Zhou Yuliang and Chang Zhongxue of the Shaowen Police Station in 2003. They beat her and gave her a two-year term at the Shuanghe Forced Labor Camp in Qiqihar. She was forced to work for 16 hours a day without pay and also subjected to intensive brainwashing.

Ms. Yuan went to Shanghai to help care for her grandson in 2012 and was arrested by officers Song Xiang and Zhou Jun of the Guangzhong Road Police Station and Lyu Jinyong of the Hongkou District Police Department on May 9, 2012. She was sentenced to three and a half years by the Hongkou District Court on November 19, 2012. She was so brutally tortured in Songjiang Women’s Prison that she had to be hospitalized.

In 2021, the authorities suspended Ms. Yuan’s pension. She was arrested again by Caihong Police Station officers on May 6, 2023, and later released on bail after paying a fine.