(Minghui.org) Mr. Tong Yueliang was nearly blind one year after was imprisoned at Shenyang No.1 Prison for not renouncing his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
According to his family who visited him on June 28, 2019, he was helped by several people walking to the visitation room as he was unable to see anything clearly.
The prison refused to provide any explanation of what had happened to him, nor was Mr. Tong allowed to talk about it, with strict monitoring of his conversation with his family.
Mr. Tong's family said his vision had already become blurry when they were allowed to see him in prison for the first time in late November 2018, five months after his imprisonment. They requested that the prison provide medical treatment for him, but was rejected with the excuse that he refused to give up practicing Falun Gong.
Zhang Chao, the head of the 19th strict management ward where Mr. Tong is currently held at, later demanded 5,000 yuan from Mr. Tong's family and said they needed the money to treat his eyes.
Zhang told Mr. Tong's family that they did take him to see a doctor, but the doctor said Mr. Tong's eyes were beyond treatment. The family demanded medical parole for him so that they could seek a second opinion, but Zhang rejected the request and said, “If you don't agree, feel free to file a complaint against us, whatever.”
Mr. Tong, a teacher in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, was arrested on March 20, 2017. He appeared in Beizhen City Court on December 1, 2017 and was sentenced to five years in prison and fined 20,000 yuan on February 2, 2018.
He was first admitted to Liaoxi New Inmates Prison and then transferred to Shenyang No.1 Prison in June 2018.
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