How the Harassment of Our Family Made For an Eventful New Year's Day

[Minghui net] The following is an account of what our family experienced on the days leading up to the turn of the century. On the afternoon of December 12^th, 2000, my mother and I were at home. (We both had once been detained due to petitioning in Tiananmen Square) My mother went out to buy some oil at around 2:00 PM but she did not come back until 6:00 PM. To my surprise, six or seven policemen wearing uniforms came along with her and they planned to bring her to the police station after she had dinner. My father (a non-practitioner) asked them what had happened and found out that my mother had visited another practitioner on her way to do the shopping. For no reason, those policemen who were watching her brought her to the police station. During the several hours my mother was detained, she was not allowed to call home. I asked them why they would treat my mother like that. Their only reply was that they were carrying out orders from above. In spite of my protests, they took my mother away. What was more puzzling was that they called at 11:40 PM and asked my father to go to the police station and take my mother home. At around 6:40 AM on December 31st, 2000, I was about to go to work. However, one cadre from the Street Committee Office grabbed my arm and told me that the police station had ordered that I was not allowed to go out. I told him that I was only going to work. He still would not loosen his grip and said that he would let me go out only if given permission by the police station. Fortunately, my father came over. This policeman still insisted on this unreasonable requirement and even asked my father to take me to the police station to ask for permission. While he was endlessly talking to my father, I got away. But the harassment didn't end there. That afternoon, police took my mother to the police station while she was home alone. I heard from my father that the police and staff members from the Street Committee Office had come to our house three or four times already. At night my father went to the police station to ask for the release of my mother but they rudely replied that they had no idea where my mother was. Does the Street Committee have the right to arrest innocent people even without the permission of the police station? My father then went to the Street Committee Office to inquire of my mother's whereabouts. This time he was told that my mother was somewhere near here and they guaranteed her release the next day. On the morning of January 1^st, 2001, police twice came to my house to check whether I was at home and told me that I could not go out. But didn't I even have the right to visit my grandma and have a family reunion on this holiday? Police said that I could only go in the afternoon. At about 4:00 PM when my father and I had just got back from my grandma's place, the police came again to check whether or not I was home. We then realized that they had broken their promise since my mother had not been released. Two other women who live upstairs were confined at home too. To prevent their leaving, the police waited in the janitor's room downstairs 24 hours a day. A practitioner in Beijing January 3, 2001