(Minghui.org) A former teacher in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, was arrested in November 2021 at the home of a local Falun Gong practitioner whom she was visiting to seek help finding a job. Although they had no evidence to charge her, the authorities accused Ms. Liu Yurong of “attempting to commit a crime” and sentenced her to one year. Her sister recently filed a complaint against the seven key perpetrators involved in her case and demanded Ms. Liu’s immediate release.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Below is the complaint filed by Ms. Liu Yujun with the Jinzhou City Procuratorate and Jinzhou City Court in September 2022.
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My sister Liu Yurong went to Ms. Kang’s home on November 27, 2021, to ask for her help finding a job. Officers from the Taihe District Domestic Security Office and Beijiao Police Station arrested her and took her to the local detention center that evening.
Because Yurong has had a stroke before and also has persistent high blood pressure, her family is very worried about her.
A week passed and no one ever contacted us about her case. Concerned about her health, I went to the Beijiao Police Station and urged the police chief, Liu Jin, to release her. Liu said he was aware of my sister’s condition, but he didn’t have the authority to release her because the Taihe District Domestic Security Office had ordered her arrest.
I then went to the Domestic Security Office and met with director Liu Changjie. Liu said that Yurong was doing just fine. While physical exams usually cost 300 yuan, he claimed they spent 600 yuan on her physical. He said she didn’t have any medical condition and that her arrest had been approved. He told me to sign her arrest approval document, but I refused to.
Yurong used to teach at Cuiyan Middle School. She worked very hard and her students always ranked first in the county-wide exams. Due to years of hard work, she developed such severe problems with her kidneys, stomach, and liver that she almost wasn’t able to teach anymore. A friend recommended that she practice Falun Gong, and she recovered only after practicing it for just a few weeks.
Because she distributed informational materials about Falun Gong, Yurong was arrested in 2008 and sentenced to six years by the Linghai City Court. Cuiyan Middle School fired her.
In 2013, the prison informed us that Yurong was on the verge of death and told us to take her home. We took her to the hospital, where they said she’d had a stroke. The doctor said they couldn’t help her and discharged her.
By practicing Falun Gong, she gradually recovered. But the left side of her body remained numb, and her reactions were slow. She tried to find menial jobs, but no one would hire her.
When Yurong reached the retirement age of 55 in 2017, the social security bureau said that, because she’d been fired by her employer, 14 years of her service before the pension reform in 1997 would be wiped out. That left her with fewer than 11 years of service between 1997 and her arrest in 2008 to be counted towards her pension benefit calculation. Since a minimum of 15 years is required to receive benefits, she was ineligible to receive any retirement funds unless she made contributions to meet the 15-year requirement.
My sister couldn’t afford to make up the pension contributions. Even if she had the money, she felt that she didn’t do anything wrong by practicing Falun Gong and she never should have had those 14 years of service wiped out in the first place. She thought being punished twice (a prison sentence and no pension) was illegal and tried to seek justice through various agencies but to no avail.
Before Yurong was arrested in 2008, she lived with our mother. Her arrest dealt our mother a heavy blow and she passed away a year later. Not long after her passing, her house was demolished due to the construction of a water reservoir. When Yurong was released, she was compensated only a small amount for the demolition of the house. She used that money to pay her medical expenses and to cover her basic living costs. She was extremely frugal and sometimes did odd jobs caring for the elderly.
If her school hadn’t fired her, she would have received at least 6,000 yuan a month. But we knew that she was already very fortunate to have survived the torture in prison and tried our best to help her. But if she got sick again, we couldn’t afford to pay her medical bills.
On the evening of November 27, 2021, Yurong was arrested at Ms. Kang’s home. When Ms. Kang was released the next day due to her high blood pressure and advanced age, she told us that she had explained to the police that Yurong had come to her home to look for a job, but the police insisted on holding her in custody. Her arrest was approved a month later.
I hired a lawyer for Yurong. When the lawyer went to the Domestic Security Office on December 28, 2021, to inquire about her case, director Liu Changjie and deputy Li Lei refused to meet with him but did send an officer to talk to him. The officer told the lawyer that Yurong had admitted that she distributed Falun Gong materials.
The lawyer went to the detention center hours later and see Yurong. She told him that the police attempted to force her to admit that she went to Ms. Kang’s home to get Falun Gong materials to distribute, but she refused to acquiesce. She also said that, because of her dangerously high blood pressure of 110/170 mmHg, the detention center didn’t arrange for her to be on duty at night.
It upset me to learn that the police were fully aware of her condition, yet the director of the Domestic Security Office still claimed that she was doing great.
Also on December 28, the lawyer submitted several requests—to the police to release Yurong and to the Linghai City Procuratorate to withdraw the decision to approve her arrest. I also wrote to the procuratorate, demanding that they investigate how the police framed Yurong, but I never received a response.
In another letter the lawyer wrote to the Linghai City Procuratorate, he demanded that the authorities release my sister due to her health. During a call on January 24, 2022, prosecutor Zeng Qiang told the lawyer that there was no way for him to release Yurong, but he could give her a light sentence. He revealed that it was a top-down decision from Ma Liang, the president of the Linghai City Procuratorate.
Because they didn’t have any solid evidence against Yurong, they charged her with “attempting to commit a crime.” Prosecutor Zeng told the lawyer that Yurong once admitted that, if she were ever given Falun Gong materials, she might go out and distribute them.
Two days later on January 26, the lawyer received a formal reply from the prosecutor. It said that after reviewing her case, they decided that it was necessary to keep Yurong in custody, because she “posed an immediate danger to society, as she was suspected of using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement.”
The lawyer later called the prosecutor several times to demand Yurong’s release, but to no avail. I also called the prosecutor to inquire about Yurong’s case, but as soon as I explained the situation, he said that I’d called the wrong number and hung up.
After Yurong was indicted, I also called Xu Bing, a Linghai City Court judge, in June 2022. She asked me to wait. When I called her again on July 13, she asked me how I’d gotten her cellphone number and threatened to investigate me.
The lawyer and I went to the Linghai City Court on the morning of July 18 to submit his defense opinion. We were surprised to be told that the court had already tried Yurong on July 13 but that judge Xu had yet to announce the verdict. I recalled that when I called the judge on the afternoon of July 13, she didn’t say anything about the hearing that morning.
On August 8, the judge sentenced Yurong to one year with a 2,000-yuan fine.
In Yurong’s case, the police worked hand-in-glove with the prosecutor and the judge to wrongfully sentence her. They are persecuting good people and abusing the law. I’m now filing a complaint against Liu Changjie, the head of Taihe District Domestic Security Office; Li Lei, the deputy head of Taihe District Domestic Security Office; Liu Jin, the chief of Beijiao Police Station; Zeng Qiang, the prosecutor of Linghai City Procuratorate; Xu Bing, the judge of Linghai City Court; and Chen Ruirui, the head of Jinzhou City Women’s Detention Center.
I demand that these perpetrators be held accountable for the persecution. I also demand that the authorities release Yurong immediately and compensate her accordingly.
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