(Minghui.org) A 72-year-old Suining City, Sichuan Province resident has been detained for over two months and is now facing prosecution for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Yuan Qiongxiu, a former employee of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, was talking to someone outside a farmers’ market around 8 a.m. on April 28, 2024, when five officers from the Jiahe Police Station suddenly showed up and arrested her. They held her hands behind her back, tied her wrists up, took photos of her and pushed her into a black car with no license plate. Her home was ransacked shortly after.
The police kept Ms. Yuan’s family in the dark as to her whereabouts. It took them over two months to find that she was detained at the Yongxing Town Detention Center. The police are now preparing to submit her case to the local procuratorate.
Taking Up Falun Gong
Ms. Yuan suffered many ailments before she took up Falun Gong, including a neck problem, frozen shoulder, a kidney condition and Meniere’s syndrome. She tried all kinds of treatments, but to no avail. Due to the pressure to handle her full-time job and care for her middle-schooler son, she often felt exhausted.
One month after Ms. Yuan took up Falun Gong in the summer of 1995, she found herself no longer out of breath after climbing the stairs. Instead, she felt light and energetic. In October that year, her husband died in an accident. She also thanked Falun Gong for giving her strength to cope with the unbearable loss.
At work, Ms. Yuan was friendly and hard-working. She was given the “Best Employee” award among all bank branches in the city at the end of 1996. She also won many other awards in other years.
Two Previous Prison Sentences
Because Ms. Yuan refused to renounce Falun Gong when the persecution started in 1999, she was arrested multiple times and sentenced twice to 2 and 2.5 years, respectively. The authorities also withheld 128,000 yuan from her pension account, causing tremendous financial hardship.
First Prison Sentence
Ms. Yuan was first arrested on September 4, 2002, after being reported for putting up Falun Gong materials near the Beimen Train Station with two other practitioners, Ms. Qin Zhengfang and Ms. Wu Yueying. Four officers chased after them and took them to the Jiahe Police Station.
Officer Yao Jianguo and another officer surnamed Zhong were in charge of their cases. They took the three women to the Chengbei Lockup in the evening. They hung up Ms. Qin by her wrists with her toes barely touching the ground. They also whipped her with a leather belt. Ms. Wu was handcuffed to an object in the hallway. Ms. Yuan tried to stop the police from beating them. A guard threatened to detain her in a solitary confinement cell. The police later interrogated the practitioners as to what materials they put up and where they got them.
Ms. Yuan was transferred to the Yongxing Detention Center a few days later and was soon sentenced to two years. After 115 days of detention, she was released on medical parole. Her family spent over 10,000 yuan getting her out.
Second Prison Sentence
Liu Yulan of the Jiahe Community Office and another officer from the Jiahe Police Station broke into Ms. Yuan’s home at around 11:30 a.m. on June 6, 2018. They held her wrists so tightly that they were bruised. While one person watched her, the other took photos of every room in her home and sent the photos to the Jingkai District Police Department and the Jiahe Police Station.
More police officers and Chen Kaiquan from the Jiahe Community Office arrived shortly after. Ms. Yuan condemned them for trespassing on her private residence without following the proper process. One officer pointed to his police uniform and said this was proper process. Right then her son called her, but the police didn’t allow her to answer the phone.
The police took Ms. Yuan to a small room in the Jingkai District Police Department around 2 p.m. for interrogation. She refused to answer any questions. She was transferred to the Yongxing Detention Center at 10 p.m.
The police later submitted Ms. Yuan’s case to the local procuratorate, which returned her case twice citing insufficient evidence. The police also went to her hometown and visited her family members in an attempt to collect information against her, but to no avail. In the end, the police fabricated evidence to accuse Ms. Yuan of having over 500 Falun Gong books.
Ms. Yuan stood trial at the Chuanshan District Court on April 10, 2019 and was sentenced to 2.5 years. She was transferred from the detention center to the Sichuan Province Women’s Prison on October 24, 2019.
Financial Persecution and Two More Episodes of Harassment
After Ms. Yuan was released from prison on December 5, 2020, the Sichuan Province Social Security Bureau suspended her pension from September 2021 to October 2022 to “pay back” the 128,000 yuan of retirement benefits issued to her during her second prison term. By law, however, retirees are entitled to every penny of their pension even if they are imprisoned for whatever reason.
During the pension suspension period, Ms. Yuan was only given a monthly stipend of 850 yuan, causing her tremendous financial difficulty.
Besides the financial persecution, the authorities also kept close tabs on Ms. Yuan. Someone called her son in December 2021 trying to discover her whereabouts.
About five people knocked on Ms. Yuan’s door in June 2022. One of them said they were from the local street committee. Another one whipped out her phone to photograph Ms. Yuan but Ms. Yuan she stopped her right away.
Ms. Yuan then shut her door and the group of people left.
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