Congresswoman Calls on State Department to Help Free Florida Family’s Loved One Detained in China

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 1, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) is urging the State Department to do more to help a Florida family’s husband and father who has been detained in China for nearly two years for his faith.

Zhou Deyong, a geological engineer, was arrested in a police sweep targeting Falun Gong practitioners and their family members in eastern China’s Shandong Province in April 2021. He was then placed in the province’s Binhai Detention Center for over a year before being put on trial in August 2022.

His wife You Ling and his son Zhou You currently reside in Florida. Zhou came to the United States to visit them in 2020, before traveling back to China to take care of his ailing parents.

Zhou Deyong and You Ling in Monument Valley in Navajo County, Ariz., in January 2020. Courtesy of Zhou You

“The State Department should put all its effort to try to release not only this individual, but anyone who is under those conditions,” said Salazar in a Feb. 28 interview with NTD.

“I would certainly hope that he will be released,” Salazar added. “I mean, could you be in jail just for meditating? It only happens in the Chinese communist country.”

Falun Gong

In September last year, Salazar was one of eight lawmakers who sent a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, expressing concerns for Zhou’s welfare in Chinese custody. They pointed out how the Chinese regime has subjected Falun Gong practitioners to arbitrary detention, torture, sexual assault, and slave labor, in its ongoing effort to eliminate the group.

The lawmakers wanted Blinken to direct Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, to raise Zhou’s case with his Chinese counterparts and call for his unconditional release.

Over 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners hold a candlelight vigil at the Washington Monument on July 21, 2022. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline with slow meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The practice was very popular in China, with an estimated 70 million to 100 million people taking it up by 1999, according to official estimates.

Seeing the practice’s popularity as a threat, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched an expansive campaign of persecution targeting practitioners on July 20, 1999.

Now, more than 23 years later, the CCP has not slowed down its persecution campaign. In 2022, at least 172 Falun Gong practitioners were persecuted to death, at least 633 practitioners were handed prison sentences, and at least 240 were forcibly sent to brainwashing centers, according to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to reporting on the persecution of the group in China.

Over the years, many Falun Gong practitioners have been killed as they became victims of the Chinese regime’s organ-harvesting industry.

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China

Zhou’s case underscores a real threat posed by the communist regime in China, according to the congresswoman.

“The threat of the socialist, neo-Marxist, communist ideology is very present,” Salazar said. “China is one of the actors trying to penetrate and to peddle that ideology into our civil society and into our youth. So that’s why we’re here. We choose America, we choose freedom.”

In late January, Salazar and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) introduced House Concurrent Resolution 9, to denounce the horrors and failures of socialism. The bill was passed on Feb. 2 following a 327–86 vote, with all Republicans and 109 Democrats supporting the measure.

“The passage of this resolution is a victory for anyone in the United States who believes in the power of individual liberty over the oppressive statism of socialism,” said Salazar in a statement after the vote. “We sent a strong message to the world that socialism has no home in the United States.”

Salazar has also been active in legislation to confront China’s related issues.

In early February, she was one of the original co-sponsors of a House bill (H.R.809) that would prevent entities with ties to Beijing from buying farmland in the United States.

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The congresswoman also teamed up with Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) to address challenges posed by Chinese ports in the Western hemisphere in February 2022, when they introduced a bill that would require the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of National Intelligence to deliver a report to congressional committees. The report would identify ports under China’s control and their military capability.

“China has started infiltrating ports across Latin America through predatory lending schemes that harm countries and put key national infrastructure at risk,” Salazar said in a statement accompanying the legislation. “The United States will be safer because we are working to ensure that China cannot put naval bases near American shores.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the State Department for comment.