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The Xingtai Police and 610 Office Routinely Impose Heavy Fines on Falun Gong Practitioners
(Clearwisdom.net) For nine years, heavy fines have been routinely used by
the police and 610 Office agents in Xingtai, Hebei Province as just
one of the means to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. Since February, 2008, the National Security Brigade of the police department
sub-bureau in Qiaoxi, Xingtai, would release Falun Gong practitioners who had
been arrested for distributing truth-clarification materials, but
only after they paid an 8,000 yuan fine. At the end of March, police
department sub-bureau officers arrested several people from Shandong who said
that they were not Falun Gong practitioners. Still, each of them were fined over
10,000 yuan. When Falun Gong practitioners are arrested for watching NTDTV, the Xingtai
National Security Brigade either sends them to a detention center or fines them
each 5,000 yuan. Wu Shuqi, the head of this local National Security Brigade office, pointed at
his luxury car and boasted in public, "This vehicle was obtained by
soliciting money". He had hired people to spy on Falun Gong practitioners.
He often tracks practitioners and brings a camera with him when searching the
homes of practitioners who are prosperous. Whenever he finds Falun Gong books
and truth-clarifying materials, he extorts heavy fines. In 2007 alone, he
extorted heavy fines from over ten practitioners. In June, the Qiaodong National Security Brigade ransacked a Falun Gong
practitioner's home after breaking down the door and confiscated 165,000 yuan
that she had saved for buying a house. Xingtai 610 personnel often said, "There is no specific legal
regulations about Falun Gong; if the authorities above us loosen up, then we
will loosen up. If the above tightens, we tighten, and certain instructions will
be burned after we perform them." Published on July 21, 2008
Posting date: 8/5/2008 |