(Minghui.org) A 70-year-old woman in Liaoyang City, Liaoning Province, completed a 3.5-year prison term in August 2024 for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.

Ms. Chen Yuqin’s wrongful imprisonment stemmed from her arrest on February 24, 2021. She was first held in the Liaoyang City Detention Center. At her hearing in the Liaoyang City Court on an unknown date, her lawyer entered a not guilty plea as no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong. She also testified in her own defense. The judge still sentenced her to three and a half years. She was transferred to the Liaoning Province Second Women’s Prison on March 29, 2023.

Ms. Chen was assigned to Team Two of Division One but was ordered to report to Team Eight in the same division every day. Several white collar criminals there forced her to study texts that slandered Falun Gong.

To turn the inmates against Ms. Chen, the Team Two guards based the work quota, term reductions, and food quality of the over 50 inmates on Ms. Chen’s “performance.” Whenever she refused to write statements to renounce Falun Gong, the guards would punish the other inmates as well as Ms. Chen. The inmates, in turn, abused her. They beat her, kicked her private part, poured dirty water on her bed, and deprived her of sleep.

The workshop foreman in Team Two was a drug dealer who had already had her life sentence reduced. After Ms. Chen was admitted, she saw an opportunity for further term reduction, so she tried all kinds of things to try to make Ms. Chen renounce Falun Gong. Ms. Chen held firm to her faith and the drug dealer accused her of being selfish.

Due to the abuse in prison, Ms. Chen had leg cramps every day and persistent pain all over her body. She was released around August 24, 2024.