(Minghui.org) A Beijing resident has been detained incommunicado since she was arrested on September 25, 2022 for practicing Falun Gong, a mind-body discipline also known as Falun Dafa that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999.
Ms. Qi Yingchun’s family heard from an insider that officer Tao Junfeng of her local police station suspected her of sending information about the persecution of Falun Gong to overseas media and thus arrested her. Her arrest was approved quickly afterwards. The family never received any official update about her case since, nor do they know where she is currently detained.
Past Persecution
Ms. Qi, in her 60s, was an audio-visual education center engineer in Renmin University of China. She and her mother, Ms. Qi Yuzhen, a retired professor of the Archives Department of Renmin University of China, both took up Falun Gong in the summer of 1997.
Ms. Qi Yingchun used to suffer frequent fever and her mother struggled with a heart condition and high blood pressure. Both of their conditions disappeared shortly after they began practicing Falun Gong. Although Ms. Qi’s father didn’t join them in the practice, his facial nerve pain was often alleviated when he recited the phrases “Falun Dafa is good; Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance is good.”
After the persecution began, Ms. Qi was arrested at work on March 26, 2001 by her school’s security personnel and officers from the Haidian Police Station. She was taken to the brainwashing center located inside the Tuanhe Forced Labor. Two staff members grabbed her by the hair and hit her head against the wall. They also forced her to squat or stand for long hours, without allowing her to eat.
After Ms. Qi was released 45 days later, she was forced to live away from home to hide from the police. The school fired her on October 12, 2001 and wiped out her 20 years of service to be counted in the calculation of her pension benefits after she reached the retirement age later.
Ms. Qi was arrested again during the 2002 New Year and held at the Chongwen Detention Center for ten days.
Ms. Qi was reported by a friend for talking to her about the persecution of Falun Gong, and arrested on May 18, 2003. A police officer surnamed Wang hit her in the eye and kicked her calf while wearing hard boots, causing bleeding injuries and bruises to both her eye and leg. Wang also stabbed her head with a metal object.
While Ms. Qi only had three copies of Falun Gong materials she prepared for her friend, the police fabricated evidence and claimed that they found over 100 copies of the materials on her during the arrest. She was later given two years at the Beijing Women’s Forced Labor Camp.
As Ms. Qi held a hunger strike to protest during her labor camp term, she was kept at a hospital for over four months and force fed. After she was taken back to the 7th team in the labor camp, she was monitored by two inmates around the clock, who beat and verbally abused her at will. She was not allowed to take showers or do laundry. She was often forced to stand, squat or sit on a small stool without moving for long hours. In the winter, the inmates forced her to stand in front of an open window to freeze her. Several inmates once pushed her to the ground, causing severe injury to her back.
In addition to the physical torture, she was also forced to watch videos smearing Falun Gong every day.
After she was later transferred to the 2nd team, the guards specifically forced her to sit on a chair motionless every day. She had to keep her legs together, with her hands on her lap, and her eyes looking straight forward. If she moved or bent her arms a bit, the inmates monitoring her would slap her in the face, beat her or stab her hands with ballpoint pens. The back of her hands was covered with the injuries from the stabbing.
Torture reenactment: sitting on a small stool
Ms. Qi was constantly monitored by her school security and community workers when she returned to her campus apartment on May 18, 2005 after being released from the labor camp. The harassment and surveillance intensified after the pandemic broke out in 2020. Even students, delivery workers, and other school employees were ordered to monitor her when she was walking on campus. She was often followed when she went to the nearby supermarket, bank, or hair salon.
She wasn’t allowed to leave home between January 20 and March 25, 2022, and especially during the Winter Olympics in February. If she had to go out, she had to seek permission from the local police.
When Ms. Qi refused to answer three harassment phone calls from officer Tao Junfeng on April 24, 2022, seven plainclothes officers went to her home at 3 p.m. that day. They banged on her door, covered the peephole on the door and her security camera, and then cut off her home’s power and Internet connection.
Several officers smashed her door and broke in shortly after. Claiming that someone reported her for practicing Falun Gong, they searched every corner of her home and pried open all of her cabinets, drawers, and dressers. Around 80 of her Falun Gong books, a photo of Falun Gong’s founder, two desktop computers (including a broken one), a laptop computer, three media players, several cellphones, and her indoor security camera were all confiscated. Even the antique magazines and books collected by her parents weren’t spared.
Ms. Qi was then taken to the local police station, where the police forcibly collected her fingerprints, and blood and urine samples. They also performed an electrocardiogram and an X-ray on her. She demanded to know the reason for her arrest, and an officer responded that it was because she had just shouted “Falun Dafa is good.” As the local detention center refused to admit her due to the pandemic, she was released on a one-year bail a day later, only to be arrested again five months later and remained detained since.
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