Students Threatened With Expulsion, Harassed, and Jailed for Refusing to Give Up Their Faith

(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

Recently, several reports have emerged of students in China being threatened, detained, and even persecuted for their faith.

In some cases, the students were expelled and never able to complete their studies. Others have died for refusing to renounce their faith or were harassed for the faith of their family members. Still others were detained and threatened for resisting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of the spiritual faith of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa).

Falun Gong is a peaceful mind-body discipline based on the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance practiced by over 100 million people around the world and has been bestowed with honors by many of the world’s governments. However, for the last 25 years, Falun Gong has been violently persecuted by the CCP. It started when the former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin launched an unprecedented campaign of persecution targeting the spiritual practice on July 20, 1999, initiating the mass arrest and imprisonment of countless adherents.

Here are a few recent cases reported by Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit that reports on the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China.

Falun Dafa practitioners take part in a parade to celebrate World Falun Dafa Day while calling for an end to the persecution in China, in New York City, on May 10, 2024. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) is based on the universal values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, or in Chinese, zhen 真 shan 善 ren 忍. (The Epoch Times)

Student Threatened, Father Jailed

Xie Xiaoting, an undergraduate student at the Guangdong Pharmaceutical University in Zhongshan City, was detained multiple times and threatened with expulsion after she tore down a poster spreading the communist regime’s hate propaganda about Falun Gong. She came across the poster on Jan. 9, according to Minghui.org. Posted on a bulletin board, it contained information that slandered Falun Gong.

Ms. Xie, who practices Falun Gong and has witnessed the persecution of her family firsthand, knew the poster’s misleading content was aimed at sowing hatred among the Chinese people—one of the many tactics the CCP employs to maintain its control and justify its persecution of Falun Gong. Ms. Xie tore down the poster to prevent more people from being misled, and her actions were captured on a surveillance camera.

Several hours later, local police informed Ms. Xie’s school they wanted to question her. The school administrators deceived the young woman into going to the police station, reported Minghui.org. There, the officers threatened to have her expelled and ordered her to write a “guarantee statement” to renounce her faith. She refused.

During the interrogation, a group of officers went to Ms. Xie’s dormitory and “confiscated her laptop and cell phone,” the report said. She was released around midnight.

A week later, on Jan. 17, another school official deceived Ms. Xie into reporting at the Communist Party Committee’s Office located on campus. She was again pressured to renounce her faith. School officials threatened to expel her when she refused to sign any statements promising to stop practicing Falun Gong.

She was allowed to go home at 10 p.m. that night, but the harassment didn’t stop there.

Falun Gong adherents take part in a rally to mark the 24th anniversary of the Chinese regime’s persecution of the spiritual discipline at the National Mall in Washington on July 20, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

The police officer again showed up to talk with Ms. Xie on April 24 and “kept pressuring her” to reveal information about the Falun Gong adherents in her hometown. While the interrogation was taking place, a group of officers went to Ms. Xie’s hometown and ransacked her parents’ home. She was released around 11 p.m. that night. Her father, Mr. Xie Yujun, also a Falun Gong practitioner, was arrested the next day.

Recently, when the school and the police called Ms. Xie to talk once again, the young student, who has faced harassment multiple times, bluntly refused. Her father is still in detention at the time of writing.

College Student Incarcerated

Liu Junhua, a college student from Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province, is currently serving a 4 1/2-year term in Jiangxi Province Prison for practicing Falun Gong.

According to a Minghui.org report from April this year, Mr. Liu was held in solitary confinement for “at least three months” as he refused to renounce his faith.

Mr. Liu’s parents, both retired college professors, approached his university in vain to seek help in getting him out of detention. When they visited their son in December 2023, they pleaded and waited for over eight hours before being allowed to see him.

“The couple were devastated to see Mr. Liu slowly walking out while being held by two people by his arms. He was emaciated and his hands kept shaking. He said that he was placed in solitary confinement for not renouncing Falun Gong,” stated Minghui.org in its April 2024 report.

A banner reading “Falun Dafa Is Good” flies over the Hudson River in New York to mark the worldwide celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of Falun Dafa's public introduction, on May 13, 2024. (Larry Dye/The Epoch Times)

Students Harassed for Family’s Faith

In one of many other instances, an elementary school girl from Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, was also threatened with expulsion for her family’s faith. In July 2022, at 11 p.m. one evening, the young girl, then 9 years old, was sleeping when police broke into her home. The officers had arrested her 73-year-old grandmother Fan Jinqing earlier in the day and snatched the house keys from the elderly woman, reported Minghui.org.

The police then brought the child to the police station on the pretext that she’d be able to see her grandmother, but instead, they photographed and video-recorded her, wanting to know if she too practiced Falun Gong. They threatened to have her expelled from school if she did. The girl was interrogated until midnight when a relative was called to pick her up.

In a similar incident, Minghui.org reported that a high school student from Huaian City, Anhui Province, was expelled from school because his grandmother practiced Falun Gong. The police had been repeatedly harassing his disabled grandmother Li Wenlan with the intent of forcing her to give up her faith. One of Ms. Li’s other grandchildren was also refused admission into university because of her grandmother’s faith.