After 13 Years of Incarceration, 65-year-old Woman Given Fourth Prison Term for Her Faith

(Minghui.org) Ms. Liu Suzhi was recently sentenced to 3.5 years for raising awareness about the persecution of her faith in Falun Gong. This is the fourth time she has been convicted for her faith. She has appealed to the higher court.

Ms. Liu, a 65-year-old resident in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, took up Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline, in 1999 and credits the practice for curing many of her ailments.

Because of talking to people about Falun Gong at a farmers’ market on the morning of January 4, 2022, Ms. Liu and another practitioner Ms. Zhang Yunkun were reported and arrested. Their homes were ransacked as well.

The Lishan District Court held a joint hearing of the cases against both women on August 10. Ms. Liu’s family learned about her sentencing on September 29. It’s not clear whether Ms. Zhang has been sentenced.

Three Prior Sentences

Shortly after the communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, Ms. Liu went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice her faith. She was arrested, taken back to Anshan, and held at the Anshan Detention Center for two weeks. As the police attempted to arrest her again shortly after, she was forced to live away from home, only to be seized and taken to the Anshan Detention Center. She was sentenced to five years in the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison on October 1, 2001.

The prison guards ordered the inmates to beat her and deprive her of sleep for two weeks. When she was too sleepy to keep her eyes open, they stabbed her with needles and an awl tool and hit her head with a broom. As she still refused to renounce Falun Gong, the guards shocked her with electric batons. She was very dizzy and kept vomiting. Later the guards forced her to sit on a 5 cm by 13.2 cm small stool from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Torture illustration: shocked with multiple electric batons

Only a year after she was released, she was arrested again in 2007 and sentenced to six years at the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison, after 15 months at the Anshan Detention Center. The guards forced her to watch videos smearing Falun Gong and didn’t provide her with a blanket and bedding in the winter.

When she applied for retirement after being released, she was devastated to learn that she had been fired and not entitled to any retirement benefits.

Ms. Liu was sentenced to another two years in 2018 by the Lishan District Court.

Perpetrators’ contact information:

Wang Tiejie (王铁杰), judge: [phone]Xiang Shi (相石), prosecutor: [phone]Wang Zihang (王子航), police officer in charge of her case: [phone]

(More perpetrators’ contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)