(Minghui.org) It was recently confirmed by Minghui.org that a 70-year-old resident of the 852 Farm in Baoqing County, Heilongjiang Province has been sentenced to three years for practicing Falun Gong. This is the third time that Ms. Liu Rangfang has been sentenced for her faith since the Chinese communist regime began to persecute Falun Gong in July 1999.
Ms. Liu was arrested in May 2023, only six months after she finished serving a previous three-year term. She appeared in the Hongxinglong Court on December 8, 2023. The judge announced her verdict at an unknown date. It’s not clear where Ms. Liu is currently detained.
Ms. Liu, a former elementary school teacher, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the 1990s. She soon recovered after taking up Falun Gong in July 1998. Because she held firm to her faith after the onset of the persecution, she was arrested nine other times prior to her latest ordeal. She was previously held in a brainwashing center for six months and served a two-year labor camp term and two prior prison terms of five and three years.
While serving time at the Xigemu Forced Labor Camp, she was restrained in a metal chair for seven days, held in solitary confinement, force-fed and forced to do hard labor without pay.
Ms. Liu served both of her two prior prison terms (2011-2016 and December 2019-December 2022) at the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison in the capital city of Harbin. She was subjected to savage beatings and forced to sit on a small stool motionless for long hours. The guards also forced her to work long hours without pay. Due to the intensive torture, she had to use a cane when she was released from the second term on December 3, 2022.
When Ms. Liu applied for her pension in 2019, the local social security bureau initially asked her to pay 20,000 yuan of contributions and affirmed that she had 26 years of service on record. But not long after, the officials denied her application, saying that because she practices Falun Gong, all of her service record was wiped out and she had to make another 15 years of contribution before she can start to receive a pension.
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