Many Practitioners Arrested and Fined Recently by Police in Weifang City, Shandong Province

At around 7 a.m. on October 29th, 2008, police officers Zou Shaoping and other officers from Yuhe Town in Weifang City, Shandong Province, barged into the residence of Ms. Li Shuqin in Yangjia Village. They took her Falun Gong books, one MP3 player, two cassette players, and two sets of Falun Gong exercise music CDs.

They took Ms. Li to the Yuhe Police Station and incarcerated her. They tried to extort at least twenty thousand yuan¹ from her family. The family did not cooperate, so the police did a blood test on Li Shuqin against her will in the afternoon. They took her to Yuhe Hospital to check her blood pressure and her heart rate. When they were checking her, she had a heart attack. When she was lying on the bed, her whole body was shaking and bouncing around on the bed. Despite her being in this condition, the police still took her to the Weifang City Detention Centre.

Then the police continued to threaten her family. They told them that if they did not hand over the money, they would send Ms. Li somewhere else. Her family could not withstand these threats and paid the authorities ten thousand yuan. Ms. Li was sent home on November 10th, after 13 days of maltreatment, mainly because she showed signs of illness.

At 7 a.m. on October 29th, 2008, officers from Yuhe Police Station and the Weifang Police Department barged into the residence of Ms. Kao Jingyun in Yangjia Village, Yuhe Town. They arrested Ms. Kao and confiscated five Falun Gong books, five cassette tapes of exercise music, one MP3 player, one cassette tape player, and one audio system. Her family gave in to their threats and shelled out ten thousand yuan. Ms. Kao was detained for 13 days in the Weifang Detention Centre before being released.

On the morning of October 25th, 2008, Ms. Chen Yueqin was distributing leaflets exposing the persecution and telling people the facts about Falun Gong in Yuhe. She was followed by plain clothes officers from the Yuhe Town Police Station, arrested, and taken to the police station. At around 11 a.m., five to six policemen snatched her keys and then went to her house to ransack it. They took away Falun Gong materials and books. They also took away her recently purchased notebook computer. When they took the computer, her mother protested and tried to stop them. They said they were going to check to see if there was anything important on the computer. If not, they would return it. Other practitioners went to the police station to persuade the police not to persecute Falun Gong or practitioners. They told them that doing such bad deeds was not good for their futures or the futures of their families. In the afternoon, the officers dragged Ms. Chen to the hospital for a blood test, blood pressure check, and heart rate check. At 5 p.m., they managed to extort thirty thousand yuan from her family before releasing her. When her family asked for the return of her computer, National Security Team personnel in Weifang City extorted another one thousand yuan before returning the computer.

On November 7th, 2008, Feng Shouai of Mou Township, Fangzi District, was arrested and taken to the Weifang City Detention Centre. We are still investigating the details of this case.

Note

1. "Yuan" is the Chinese currency; 500 yuan is equal to the average monthly income of an urban worker in China.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/12/8/191291.html