Family Torn Apart as Engineer Imprisoned for Religious Beliefs

Former engineer Chunxia Liu practiced her faith for 26 years.

Yet since 2001, she has been in and out of jail, illegally detained for her spiritual beliefs, while also losing her job, family, and freedom.

Chunxia was an adherent of the meditation practice Falun Dafa, which combines meditation and moral teachings to cultivate the mind and body.

“She was also known for her dedication as an engineer at Huibang Company of Hui’an Group in Shaanxi Province,” said her sister Li Liu, an Australian citizen, in an interview with The Epoch Times.

“My mother turned to Falun Dafa due to her poor health and experienced significant improvements. Inspired by its teachings on truthfulness and compassion, my sisters and I also began practicing.

“In our professional and personal lives, we strive to treat others with kindness and integrity, which has naturally brought us a lot of happiness.”

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However, Chunxia’s faith was met with severe oppression from the Chinese communist state.

She was illegally dismissed from her job and placed in a brainwashing center. When she refused to wear a prison uniform, guards stripped her naked and forced her to stand outside in the harsh winter of Shaanxi.

She eventually escaped and lived as a homeless person to avoid capture.

Chunxia was arrested again and sentenced to five years in prison in 2001, followed by another four years in 2018. After being released in 2021, she was arrested once more last year.

Now 56 years old, “almost all the best years of her life were spent in prison,” her sister lamented.

Falun Dafa, or Falun Gong, is a spiritual discipline rooted in China’s ancient traditions. During the 1990s, it quickly gained widespread popularity in China due to its significant health benefits.

However, in 1999, then-Party leader Jiang Zemin perceived its rising popularity as a threat to his authority and the atheist ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. He ordered the faith to be suppressed on July 20, 1999, leading to a large-scale persecution.

The communist regime launched a vast propaganda campaign to discredit Falun Gong and pressured international institutions, media outlets, and governments to align with its stance.

Practitioners, noted for their excellent health and clean lifestyles, also became targets for forced organ harvesting—a state-sanctioned practice involving the mass killing of detainees to sell their organs.

Senator Speaks Out at 25th Anniversary Event

Australian Greens Senator David Shoebridge said that people should be clear about the origins of the persecution.

“It commenced because the government saw it as a challenge for any kind of collective organization, any kind of collective belief that they couldn’t control, as a challenge to the powers of the Communist Party in China,” he said at a rally in Sydney commemorating the 25th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Dafa.

He also noted the “appalling evidence” of Falun Gong practitioners being executed and then having their organs removed by the “illegal medical regime in China.”

“One of the first things our government could do is be honest and frank about it in its exchanges with China and its public statements,” he said.

“No community should be persecuted, jailed, or outlawed simply because they have a set of spiritual or religious beliefs that the government doesn’t like. That should be a fundamental right that unites Australians.”