(Minghui.org) Editor’s note: This is part of a series of death cases newly translated by the English version of Minghui.org. These cases have long been published on Chinese Minghui.org but have not been translated until now.

Name: Zhou LianyingChinese Name: 周莲英Gender: Female Age: 80City: Yong’anProvince: FujianOccupation:Date of Death: 4/25/2015Date of Most Recent Arrest:Most Recent Place of Detention:

Since the Chinese communist regime began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, Ms. Zhou Lianying and her two children, from Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, lived in terror for upholding their faith. 

Ms. Zhou’s son, Mr. Zuo Fusheng, served a forced labor term of one and a half years following his arrest in late 1999. His wife was forced to divorce him and given full custody of their daughter. He has not seen his daughter since then.

Mr. Zuo was arrested again on November 1, 2002 and given another forced labor term of two years and two months. After yet another arrest on January 19, 2011, he was sentenced to six years in prison. He was savagely beaten and once hung up for six hours straight on October 8, 2014. One of his eyes was blinded as a result of torture. After he was released in January 2017, Mr. Zuo gradually went blind in the other eye. Despite his condition, the police installed five surveillance cameras outside his home to monitor him. One camera faced his balcony, a second faced his front door, a third one monitored the hallway leading to the elevators, and the remaining two cameras were located near the staircases on either side of his apartment building.

Ms. Zhou’s daughter, Ms. Zuo Xiuyun, was also repeatedly targeted for practicing Falun Gong. She served four prison sentences during the past two-plus decades, including three years between October 12, 2000 and October 12, 2003, six years between June 3, 2004 and June 3, 2010, three and a half years between December 16, 2011 and June 16, 2015, and five years between December 28, 2015 and December 28, 2020. Her husband divorced her while she was serving her first prison sentence.

While her children were detained, Ms. Zhou frequented the police station to seek their release. Not wanting her to visit anymore, the police forced her older son to take her back to her hometown in Yong’an City in the same province. There, she struggled to live on her own.

Ms. Zhou managed to travel from Yong’an to Fuzhou to visit her detained son and daughter in June 2014, only to be denied visitation by the prisons and detained for a day herself. 

Ms. Zhou went to the prison to see her daughter again on July 16, 2014. The police again arrested her and held her in the police station for several hours. The cash deposit she made for her daughter was also returned without her daughter’s knowledge. 

Ms. Zhou was dealt a hard blow after learning about the savage beating her son suffered in October 2014 that caused him to lose sight in his left eye. She became seriously ill in March 2015 and died on April 25, 2015, without seeing her children for a last time.