(Minghui.org) A Panzhihua City, Sichuan Province resident was quickly sentenced to one year after she was arrested in July 2020 after being reported for putting up information about Falun Gong.

Also known as Falun Dafa, Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Luo Yuanchao was first put under house arrest after her arrest. She was tried five months later on December 15, 2020 by the Renhe District Court. The judge sentenced her to one year and fined her 5,000 yuan. It’s not clear whether she has been taken into custody at the time of writing.

Ms. Luo, 71, is a retired employee from the Panzhihua Steel Company. She took up Falun Gong in April 1997 and credits the practice for curing her severe heart condition, kidney problem and pleurisy (chest inflammation).

After the communist regime ordered the persecution and spread demonizing propaganda against Falun Gong in July 1999, Ms. Luo felt compelled to tell people how she has benefited from practicing Falun Gong. She set out to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong in October 1999, but was arrested at a train station before leaving Sichuan, and was taken back to Panzhihua and detained 12 days.

Ms. Luo made her trip to Beijing on July 4, 2000, but was arrested again. She was brought back and held at the Panzhihua City Detention Center for another 37 days.

Because Ms. Luo and other detained practitioners did the Falun Gong exercises in the detention center on July 24, 2000, the guards whipped them with bamboo sticks and forced them to do push-ups on the next day.

The guards handcuffed Ms. Luo to two other practitioners, Ms. Yao Jiaxiu and Ms. Hou Qinying. Then they put two pairs of shackles weighing over 80 pounds on them and forced them to walk for three hours under the baking sun. Their ankles were injured and bled.

The guards refused to remove the shackles, even when the practitioners needed to eat, use the restroom, or sleep. After they held a hunger strike to protest the persecution, guard Hu Xiaochuan ordered the inmates to force feed them on July 26. Inmate Sun Ping mixed a large amount of salt into the flour paste and opened Ms. Luo’s mouth with a screwdriver. Two of her teeth were knocked out and blood gushed out on her face, neck and chest. Only then did the inmates stop the force feeding.

Ms. Luo was arrested once more on January 6, 2018 for putting up a sticker that said “Falun Dafa is good” near an elementary school. The police locked her in a metal chair and interrogated her until 3 a.m. on January 7. She was then transferred to a detention center and held there for five days.