Trying to Rescue Their Unjustly Imprisoned Husbands, Wives Are Pressured by Their Employers to Divorce Them Instead

Ms. Zhou Xiuzhen and Ms. Li Lemei from Tangshan City, Hebei Province, are married Falun Gong practitioners. Their husbands have been arrested, their homes ransacked, and their personal belongings confiscated. Instead of helping, when the two ladies hired lawyers to defend their husbands, their employers tried to interfere and attempted to force them to “sever their relationships” with their husbands.

Bian Lichao, Ms. Zhou's husband, and Li Wendong, Ms. Li Lemei's husband, were both arrested on February 25th, 2012, by local police under orders from the Tangshan 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong). Mr. Bian is in the Tangshan First Detention Centre and Mr. Li is now in the Tangshan Second Detention Centre.

In the months following the arrests,Tangshan Eleventh Middle School, where Ms. Zhou works, and Tangshan Iron and Steel Group Corporation, where Ms. Li works, have refused to help. When these two women, who firmly believe in justice, started to investigate the laws, they realized that their husbands were not guilty. They then hired defense lawyers to represent their husbands and pleaded not guilty. At the same time, they sent open letters to report the unjust treatment that each of their families had been subjected to, in hopes that government agencies and people of conscience would help.

Soon their bosses at work began to take notice. The authorities of Tangshan Eleventh Middle School and Tanghsan Iron and Steel Group Corporation attempted to force the women to fire the lawyers and told them not to complain about the unjust treatment they had been subjected to. They even attempted to force them to divorce their husbands and “take a stand [with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and against Falun Gong].” They told the women not to send any money to their detained husbands, and openly put pressure on the two already distressed women.

Because of their fear of the CCP these employers do not dare to assist these women. When challenged as to why they then go on to do all they can to prevent their employees from appealing for their husbands, they say it is because they “have to.”