(Minghui.org) An 81-year-old woman who credits Falun Gong for curing her breast cancer was sentenced to 4.5 years in late December 2020 for upholding her faith.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Cheng Sigui, of Luzhou City, Sichuan Province, was arrested on July 19, 2020, while distributing Falun Gong-related materials on the streets in Lu County, which is under the administration of Luzhou City. The police forced her to hold the materials and took pictures of her. They also forced her to walk around and recorded her gait and also her voice. She was released on bail that night.
In early September 2020, the police forced Ms. Cheng's son to drive her to Lu County after she returned from the market. She was taken to the hospital for a physical exam. At the police station, the police flashed a piece of paper in front of her and said she was formally arrested and would be detained.
Ms. Cheng was held in the police station from the afternoon until 8 p.m. before the police took her to the Hejiang Detention Center. The detention center refused to accept her when she failed the physical exam. She was released after an hour. The police told her that they would find her again.
Ms. Cheng was made to appear in the Lu County Court on October 22, 2020. She was charged with promoting Falun Gong and undermining law enforcement, a standard pretext used by the authorities to frame the practitioners.
The judge sentenced Ms. Cheng to 3 years with a 5,000 yuan fine on December 7, 2020. He also cited an earlier prison term issued in December 2016 of 2 years and 3,000 yuan fine, which hasn’t been enforced yet. So he updated her verdict to 4.5 years and 8,000 yuan fine, subtracting the six months house arrest she had served in 2016.
When Ms. Cheng received her verdict, she was outraged to read the lines that said she had confessed her crime and she had no objection to the charge. She said that this was a setup against her. Days later, the authorities ordered her son to take her to the local hospital for a physical checkup. It’s not clear whether she has been taken to prison at the time of writing.
Breast Cancer Cured by Falun Gong
Ms. Cheng used to work at a coal factory. Both her husband and a child died from cancer in the 1970s when she was in her 30s. With her meager income, she raised her two surviving children by herself. Because of her growing vegetables to sell to increase her income, the authorities blamed her for adopting capitalism and forced her to work in the countryside.
Without her care, her little son broke his arm. Her older son, who was only 6 at that time, had to learn how to cook and bathe his younger brother. At 12, he learned to buy groceries and manage the family’s daily life.
The long term hard work and tense pressure took a toll on Ms. Cheng’s health. In the 1990s, she had trouble falling asleep and she began to suffer pain in her breast and whole-body edema. When she went to the hospital for a checkup, she was devastated to be told that she had breast cancer. In 1996, she received a double mastectomy.
A year later, she came across Falun Gong. Not long after she began to practice it, she was completely cancer-free. Her high blood pressure and the rare tumor on her adrenal glands also disappeared. She has since enjoyed good health. She also became more peaceful and she was able to face the difficulty in life with a more positive attitude. Because of her firm faith in Falun Gong, she was arrested, detained, harassed and sentenced by the communist regime in the past two decades.
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