Police in Sichuan Province Step Up Persecution of Dafa Practitioners in Advance of Jiang Zemin's Visit

It has been learned that Jiang Zemin will visit Guang'an City, Sichuan Province on August 22. The authorities from the provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei, as well as Chongqing City have decided in an urgent meeting to closely monitor certain groups of people. Their main targets are Falun Gong practitioners, as well as other groups such as laid off workers who intend to appeal to the government about the injustices they have suffered. The authorities have asked the relevant departments to tightly control these so-called "dangerous elements." If anything goes wrong during Jiang's visit, the leaders of the relevant departments will be fired immediately.

The police departments in Chongqing City and Sichuan Province are conducting a mass investigation of practitioners. It's been learned they plan to resort to the following means to track practitioners:

They will have someone pretend to be staff members from utility companies or phone companies, and trick the practitioners into opening the door. Or they may have someone go to visit practitioners pretending to inquire about their living conditions. Some practitioners will be directly summoned to the police department. All these are intended to make sure practitioners stay home and do not appeal.

The police departments also notify the railway stations to immediately arrest any passenger suspected of going to Guang'an to appeal. Over a thousand police officers from Chengdu Police Department have been dispatched to track people who may want to go to Guang'an. In the main trains bound for or passing through Guang'an, there is a plainclothes policeman in almost every car of every train. Anyone who fails to show his ID or appears suspicious to the policeman is not be allowed to get off the train.

Moreover, police officers have set up various checkpoints at bus stations and railway stations.

Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2004/8/16/81884.html