(Minghui.org) Ms. Sun Jiping, 67, has been suffering from serious health issues while being detained for her faith, but the local authorities have refused to release her on bail, using the excuse that she poses great potential harm to society.
Ms. Sun and her husband Mr. Zhou Yonglin, of Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province, were arrested on January 20, 2021, for telling people about Falun Gong.
Despite the fact that no law in China criminalizes the Falun Gong spiritual and meditation discipline, the authorities often use pretexts such as “provoking trouble,” “undermining law enforcement,” or “subverting state power” to frame and imprison Falun Gong practitioners in the now 22 year-long persecution.
After nearly a month of quarantine, Ms. Sun was taken to the Jinzhou City Women’s Detention Center, and Mr. Zhou was transferred to the Linghai City Detention Center on February 22.
Ms. Sun’s lawyer made an appointment to visit Ms. Sun on February 26, but the detention center canceled it after Ms. Sun suddenly lost consciousness and was hospitalized.
On March 1, Ms. Sun was taken back to the quarantine facility again. Around the same time, the detention center called her family and told them that she would need long-term hospital care. The caller also asked for Ms. Sun’s medical records and instructed her family to apply for bail release for her. He revealed that the hospital examination didn’t find any major disease in her, except for one parameter of her blood test that was getting extremely low. Ms. Sun’s family submitted her medical records the next day.
After the Chinese Communist Party started the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, Ms. Sun was twice given forced labor prior to her latest arrest. She developed severe anemia as a result of the abuse she suffered at the labor camp. In October 2016, her anemia worsened. She suddenly experienced shortness of breath and swelling of her face and legs. The swelling problem continued into 2017. She was very weak and often fell asleep in the middle of whatever she was doing. She was later found to have bone malignant hyperplasia syndrome, hypoproteinemia, and myocardial damage. The doctor said that she would need blood transfusions to live from then on. She had at least eight blood transfusions between 2016 and 2018.
Despite her medical history, Ms. Sun's family encountered obstacles while seeking her release on bail following her latest arrest. When they applied for her bail release on March 2, 2021, the detention center guard that received them directed them to the Procuratorate, claiming that the police had submitted her case to the Procuratorate. Her family then met with the two prosecutors assigned to handle her case in the afternoon. They claimed that Ms. Sun “poses significant threat of harm to society, and her case is very special.” They said they couldn’t make a decision about her case and had to get instruction from their supervisors. Ms. Sun’s family emphasized that her condition was very serious, and they urged the prosecutors to approve her bail release soon.
Instead of releasing Ms. Sun, however, the prosecutors indicted her and transferred her case to the Linghai City Court the next day, March 3.
Ms. Sun’s son quickly contacted judge Xu Bing, who was in charge of her case, on March 4. Judge Xu also said she couldn’t make a decision about her bail release and would need to get instructions from the higher-ups. She also warned her family that Ms. Sun posed a tremendous danger to society, and even if she qualifies for the bail release, it’s very unlikely that it would be approved.
On the evening of March 4, the detention center took Ms. Sun to the Jinzhou City Central Hospital for a blood transfusion. But at the time of writing, her family is still being given the run-around between the Procuratorate and the court regarding which agency should make a decision about her bail release. Her family is now very worried about her health.
Related report:
Woman With Severe Anemia Arrested with Husband, Family Worried About Her Health
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Category: Accounts of Persecution
