(Clearwisdom.net) Taiping Town, Shuangcheng City, Heilongjiang Province, is 10 miles away from Wanjia Forced Labor Camp in Harbin City. Ever since Jiang Zemin started the persecution against Falun Gong in 1999, Taiping Town has not been peaceful. (Note: "Taiping" means peaceful.) The local government employees, deceived by lies and working to satisfy their personal interests, followed Jiang's policy to destroy Falun Dafa and colluded with the police in Harbin City to persecute practitioners.
At the beginning of 2004 in a large scale mass arrest, Taiping Town Mayor Wang Zhumin and Party Secretary Ma Fengxue conspired to arrest practitioners. They posted a notice by the entrance to the town government building proclaiming that Falun Gong was a [defamatory term deleted, eds.]. When practitioners Mr. Wu Qingshun and Mr. Jing Shiyong saw the notice, they were anxious to stop this slander of Falun Dafa and took the sign down. A few days later, the same notice was posted at the entrance of an office building in Taiping Village, the town seat. Strangely enough, the notice was taken down during the daytime, but hung up again in the evening. Obviously, this was done in an attempt to make an arrest. Mr. Wu and Mr. Jing took the sign down in order to prevent the public from being misled. They were spotted by the patrolling officer, who had been ordered to make rounds by the village employees, and were reported. Wang Guoxing and other town employees, as well as officers from the 610 Office of Harbin City, colluded to arrest Mr. Wu and Mr. Jing. Although Mr. Jing was released soon thereafter, he was arrested again only 20 days later, which marked the start of mass arrests on the evening of March 4, 2004.
Before this wave of arrests started, the Daoli District Police Department of Harbin City held a secret meeting to discuss it. In order to keep the operation secret, all cellphones of the attending policemen were controlled. Every local police station within the jurisdiction of Harbin City dispatched police forces and vehicles. According to villagers, nearly one hundred vehicles were deployed. In the dark of night, local town and village officials secretly guided the police forces to the homes of more than 20 practitioners and their families to make arrests and confiscate property. Two or three police vehicles and several policemen were deployed for each family. Since the walls surrounding the courtyards of some of the family homes were very high and the front doors were tightly locked, the police officers were unable to scale the walls, so they pulled them down to enter the homes and make arrests. Some of the practitioners were sleeping at the time and did not have time to put on their clothes. The officers simply wrapped them in their quilts and pushed them into the vehicles. They also confiscated Dafa books and materials.
In addition to those in Taiping Village, mass arrests of practitioners were also organized in other villages and in Yongsheng Township, where at least 20 more people were arrested. The detained practitioners were separately taken to the local police stations in Harbin City and later to Yazijuan Detention Center. Sixteen days later, some of the practitioners were released. Ms. Guo Fengqin and Ms. Zhou Yuzhen were sentenced to three years and taken to Wanjia Forced Labor Camp. Mr. Wang Furong, Mr. Jing Shiyong, Mr. Wang Fengshan, and Mr. Liu Shichun were sentenced to two years and taken to Changlinzi Forced Labor Camp. Mr. Wu Qingshun was sentenced to five years at Hulan County Prison. Mr. Wu Qinglin and Zhu Yumin have been unable to return home because they fear being arrested and are now destitute and homeless.
