(Minghui.org) Minghui.org previously reported that a 75-year-old woman in Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, was taken back into custody on June 18, 2025 to serve an eight-year term that she was initially allowed to serve at home due to her poor health.
New information emerged that Ms. Han Lihua, a retired kindergarten employee, was transferred from the Daqing City Detention Center to the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison on July 29, 2025. Her family was told to wait three months to visit her. Her term is set to end in June 2033 (when she will be 83).
Ms. Han Lihua
Ms. Han’s prison sentence stemmed from her initial arrest on November 22, 2020 because she practices Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. She was released on bail, sentenced to eight years and fined 50,000 yuan in December 2022.
Because Ms. Han was incapacitated for a few years (she broke her legs after taking a fall in 2018) and also suffered high blood pressure, she was denied admission by the Daqing City Detention Center and allowed to serve time at home. Despite her medical conditions, the authorities forced the Daqing City Detention Center to admit her on June 18, 2025.
Ms. Han struggled to care for herself in the detention center. The guards called her family and told them to buy a wheelchair and a handicap toilet for her.
Before her latest persecution, Ms. Han was repeatedly targeted for her faith. She was arrested on November 16, 2000 and held at various facilities (two weeks at the Ranghulu District Lockup, one month at the Daqing City Detention Center, two months at the Datong District Lockup, and two months at the Sartu District Shelter).
Her husband died on December 19, 2000 and she did not learn of it until her child visited her. She was given a three-year forced labor term in 2001 but the local labor camp refused to take her because she failed the required physical exam. She was then released.
When Ms. Han talked to her supervisors at work about Falun Gong on September 25, 2001 they reported her to police. Wang Qi and three other officers from the Lamadian Police Department seized her from home that day and took her to a local lockup. She went into shock multiple times due to the abuse and was released in critical condition more than four months later.
More than twelve agents arrested Ms. Han at home on April 22, 2003 and took her to a brainwashing center. She was held there for six months, during which time she was brutally beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to squat for long times of period, and held in solitary confinement for holding firm to her faith.
Officers Li Zhiyou, Wang, and Zhang Youfu from the Lamadian Police Department raided Ms. Han’s home on May 4, 2008 and confiscated her computer, printer, paper cutter, and Falun Gong books. During the interrogation at the police station, officer Li punched Ms. Han on her handcuffed wrists while another officer pushed over the metal chair she was sitting on, causing her to collapse on the ground. After five days of torture, she was moved to the Daqing City Detention Center.
The Ranghulu District Court sentenced Ms. Han to seven years in late October 2008 and she was admitted to the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison on January 14, 2009. She was released ahead of time on October 4, 2014, only to be notified by the Daqing Social Security Bureau that her pension had been suspended and that she must return the 180,000 yuan she received during her prison term. They claimed that no retirees were to receive retirement benefits while they are incarcerated, citing a policy issued by the General Office of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in 2001.
Ms. Han argued that both the labor camp term and the prison term were acts of persecution and that no labor law requires the return of pension benefits dispensed during detention. There was no way she could afford to make a lump sum payment of 180,000 yuan. As a result, the Daqing Social Security Bureau suspended her pension.
Around the time she broke her leg in 2018, the police harassed Ms. Han at home multiple times.
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