The coercive means used to transform these people of faith include imprisonment, torture, sexual abuse, psychiatric abuse, and forced organ harvesting. However, the persecution is not just confined to the CCP’s labor camps and prisons: tactics like deprivation of employment opportunities, confiscation of personal property, and financial exploitation have severely impacted citizens’ daily lives.
“Ruin their reputation, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically”—these were the three policies that the CCP put in place in an attempt to eradicate Falun Gong practitioners, according to the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” a nine-part editorial series published by the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times in 2004.
Falun Gong is an ancient spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Here we present a few selected instances of Falun Gong adherents in China being discriminated against for their faith and for failing the “political background check,” a routine assessment of a person’s “political file” that contains all crucial and sensitive information about the individual, both personal and professional.
Denial of Job Opportunities
After Luo Xiang graduated with a doctorate from Beijing University, no organization was willing to hire him due to his political file stating that Luo had given up his CCP membership in 1999, after he started practicing Falun Gong.
Luo applied for a teaching job at Hunan Normal University in 2004, according to Minghui.org, a United States-based nonprofit organization that documents the persecution of Falun Gong in China. The college was looking forward to having him and had even scheduled his classes for the coming semester. However, they denied hiring him after discovering from his political file that he practices Falun Gong.
Luo was told by an administrator at Wanzhou University that no school would hire him unless the details of his association with Falun Gong were removed from his political file. He tried to get the details removed by submitting a letter to the Beijing University Administration Office but did not receive a reply.
Zhang Shude from Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, was a master’s degree holder from Harbin Technological University. He found a job at the Dalian City Science and Technology Design Institute and was on an assignment in Panjin City when he was arrested, reported Minghui.org.
Zhang went to the police station to renew his temporary residence permit when he was asked if he practiced Falun Gong. The police refused to process his application when he said he did. The police showed up at his residence three days later and arrested him. Several of Zhang’s personal belongings were confiscated and he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and fined 20,000 yuan (approx. $3,000).
Zhang’s employer tried to get his mother to sign a “guarantee statement”—a forced document declaring that an adherent is remorseful for practicing Falun Gong—promising to stop her son from practicing Falun Gong, but she refused. They also took back the residence and company car provided to Zhang for his assignment in the city and terminated his employment contract a year before the end date, stating that it was Zhang’s “voluntary” termination as he failed to show up for work after his arrest.
Property Seized, Money Extorted
Hu Yanmin, 65, of Yingkou City, Liaoning Province, was released from the Dabei Prison in August 2021 after serving a seven-year term for praciticing Falun Gong. While she was incarcerated, the authorities seized her insulation material factory, including the land, facility, and materials.
Before her arrest in 2014, Hu’s business was thriving, with the annual profit of over 800,000 yuan ($116,000). The authorities also suspended her retirement pension while she was imprisoned, and even after her release, she never got the pension increase that was available to other retirees.
The persecution caused her at least 5.6 million yuan in financial loss.
As many of the Falun Gong practitioners lost their jobs after the persecution started in 1999, Li Wensheng and his wife, Wu Jinping, of Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, set up a detergent company in 2003 with several other Falun Gong practitioners. Through their hard work, the company’s revenue gradually increased, year after year.
However, police from Chaoyang City Public Security Bureau arrested the couple in 2008 and took away many of their belongings, including computers, a printer, a bankbook containing 20,000 yuan (approx. $3,000), and over 100,000 yuan in cash. The police also took the couple to their company office and wanted them to open a safe containing the company checkbooks, public seal, financial seal, and legal representative seal. When Li said that he did not have the key, the police beat him and took the safe with them. The company car was also taken away and the hired chauffeur was arrested.
The police told Li to call his employees to the office as they wanted to arrest them as well. However, Li refused and was hit in the face by an officer, causing his face to bleed. The couple were then sent to a detention center.
Employee Pi Yongli, who went to the office to find some products for a customer, was also arrested and sentenced to one year of forced labor. Another employee, Pan Yufeng, a sales manager at the company, was arrested at his home. The police wanted Pan’s wife to give them money, but she told them the couple didn’t have a bankbook. The police then took away a nice handbag. When she called them out for going after her handbag, an officer responded, “After your handbag? We are also after your house!”
Zhang Guilan of Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province, was compensated just 300,000 yuan (approx. $43,300) after her house was demolished for new construction in 2011. The amount was far less than the original compensation of 1,200,000 yuan that she was supposed to receive.
Zhang told a reporter about her plight, and the reporter interviewed the party secretary of the Nancha District Government, where she lives. The party secretary said, “Zhang Guilan practices Falun Gong so her house compensation should be less than the others. Who asked her to practice Falun Gong?”
The reporter then asked, “She practices Falun Gong, so does her house?”
“Zhang Guilan practices Falun Gong, and her house is also Falun Gong’s house,” the party secretary said, adding that the director of the Nancha District and all members of the district government committee agreed to pay Zhang lesser compensation.
When the reporter pointed out that their decision could be wrong as the law and ordinance for compensation did not mention anything about Falun Gong, the party secretary replied that in Nancha District, “what we say is the law.”
When Zhang refused to move, the utilities to her house were cut off and water later seeped into her house.
Luo Caisen, in her 60s, of Heilongjiang Province, was also arrested for practicing Falun Gong. The police confiscated 58,000 yuan (approx. $8,500)in cash but did not report it. Her family and lawyer requested the police return the money as the family needed it for their family business but they were told the case is under police investigation hence the money could not be returned.
After Luo’s case was submitted to the Acheng Procuratorate, and later to Acheng Court, the family and lawyer noted that the money was not included as prosecution evidence. The police told Luo’s son that the money would be returned to them after the judge issued the verdict. Luo was later sentenced to 1.5 years imprisonment, but the family never received the money.
Yao Tiebin and his wife, Zhang Fengrong, of Heilongjiang Province, were arrested at home in July 2008. The police confiscated several personal items including money, a computer, a printer, a video game, and a new motorcycle, amounting to over 3 million yuan (approx. $43,500). The police beat the couple until their “faces were swollen and black and blue.”
When Zhang asked the police the reason for ransacking their home and confiscating their belongings, an officer said, “The state [CCP] doesn’t allow you to practice Falun Gong. If you practice Falun Gong, then you violate the law.”
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