(Minghui.org) A 76-year-old woman in Maoming City, Guangdong Province has been detained since she was arrested at home at 3 a.m. around May 13, 2023 for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
The arresting officers from the Shuidong Police Station also raided Ms. Xie Liping’s home and confiscated her Falun Gong books. They took her to the Maoming City First Detention Center, where she remains today.
The Dianbai District Police Department in Maoming, which oversees the Shuidong Police Station, issued a formal arrest warrant against Ms. Xie on June 17. [Usually the procuratorate approves arrest, but some police agencies are given such power in handling Falun Gong cases.]
Ms. Xie’s family hired an out-of-province lawyer to defend her innocence. The lawyer visited her at the detention center on August 1. He noted that she had difficulty walking but was in good spirits. Ms. Xie explained that she broke her leg around February 2023 and had a metal plate put in it. Her detention made it harder for her to recover from her pre-existing leg injury.
Ms. Xie also said that she persisted in doing Falun Gong exercises in the early weeks of her detention, but the guards later moved her to a cell facing a surveillance camera. They’d stop her as soon as they saw her doing Falun Gong exercises from the camera.
The lawyer went straight to the Shuidong Police Station after visiting Ms. Xie. He told the officers there that he was hired to enter a not guilty plea for Ms. Xie. The police appeared very surprised, “How could [Ms. Xie’s family] find an out-of-province lawyer?” They then admitted that they were just following a higher-up’s order to arrest Ms. Xie.
Officer Zeng Weiming, who was in charge of the case, was not in. The officers who received the lawyer gave him Zeng’s contact info and said they planned to submit Ms. Xie’s case to the local procuratorate in a few days.
Loved Ones Long for Release of the Rock of Family
Ms. Xie was born into a poor family and never attended school. She took up Falun Gong before the persecution started in 1999 and soon became illness free. But she was illiterate and couldn’t read Zhuan Falun, the main teaching of Falun Gong. She asked her family and fellow practitioners to teach her to read. Little by little, she was able to read the entire book by herself.
Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance taught Ms. Xie to be a kind and considerate person. Her son worked out of town, and his wife and their two daughters live with Ms. Xie and her husband. Her daughter-in-law said that Ms. Xie treated her as if she were her own daughter, when many mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law couldn’t get along with each other.
Ms. Xie’s husband, 86, who suffers from complications from a stroke, relied on her to take care of him.
After her arrest, Ms. Xie’s loved ones wondered why the police would arrest a law-abiding citizen in the middle of the night. They long for her, the rock of their family's, release.
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