Widowed Woman in Her 70s Given Extended Prison Term for Her Faith

(Minghui.org) A Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province resident who refused to serve a previous six-month term for her faith in Falun Gong was recently arrested and had her term extended to one year.

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

Ms. Liu Shouhui, in her 70s, was first arrested on April 25, 2019 for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong. She was released around midnight and had her home ransacked on the next day. The police later took her to the local detention center, but she was rejected admission after being found to have high blood pressure.

The police constantly harassed Ms. Liu after she was released. She was taken to the Qiaoxi District Procuratorate around June 2019 and asked to sign certain case documents. She refused to comply.

The prosecutor indicted Ms. Liu about a year later. She was summoned to the Qiaoxi District Court on May 27, 2020 to pick up her indictment. The court informed her on July 3 that she was scheduled to appear in court a week later.

Insisting that she didn’t do anything wrong in speaking out for her faith, Ms. Liu refused to attend the hearing and moved. It only took a few days for the police to find out her new address and forcibly took her to the courthouse. She was sentenced to six months with a 1,000-yuan fine on August 21.

To avoid serving time, Ms. Liu lived away from home. In early 2021, her late husband’s workplace, which had been issuing a few hundred yuan in living expense to her since he died in 2018, suddenly stopped the payment. When she contacted them, she was asked to provide information showing she didn’t have any other income.

Ms. Liu went to her residential committee on September 1 to get the letter about her financial situation. When she went to her husband’s workplace to submit the letter, she was arrested by the plainclothes officers waiting there. It was later confirmed that it was officers from Dongyaozi Town Police Station who arrested her.

A day later, Ms. Liu was secretly sentenced to one year and she is now held at the Zhangjiakou City Detention Center.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Wang Dongxing (王东兴), presiding judge of Qiaoxi District Court: [phone], [phone]Geng Liyan (耿利延), presiding judge of Qiaoxi District Court: [phone], [phone]Wang Haijun (王海军), judge of Qiaoxi District Court: [phone], [phone]Wang Cuifang (王翠芳), judge of Qiaoxi District Court: [phone], [phone]

Related report:

Two Falun Gong Practitioners to Appear in Court After One Year of Harassment