Imprisoned Woman Ordered to Return Pension Benefits Issued after Her Arrest, Husband in His 80s Falls Ill

(Minghui.org) While a Luzhou City, Sichuan Province resident is serving time for her faith in Falun Gong, her husband was ordered to return the over 50,000 yuan in pension benefits issued to her after her arrest. The authorities threatened to blacklist him on the social credit system if he didn’t comply. The man, in his 80s, fell ill due to the pressure, and required surgery.

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

Ms. Dai Qunying, a 70-year-old retired paper box factory employee, was arrested on August 16, 2020 with three other practitioners. She was sentenced to three years and eight months with a 7,000-yuan fine on October 8, 2021, and taken to the Sichuan Province Women’s Prison on June 15, 2022.

The local residential committee discovered in March 2022 that Ms. Dai’s husband had been picking up her pension checks on her behalf since her arrest. They immediately had her pension suspended because it was a “mistake” to still issue her pension funds when she was in prison. They began to press her husband to return the pension benefits issued to her between her arrest in August 2020 and February 2022. When he refused to comply, they kept harassing him at home or calling him. 

On October 4, several residential committee staff member came to his home and ordered him to sign a notice, which stated that his wife must return the 53,794.76 yuan of pension benefits “illegally” received between August 2020 and February 2022. 

The staff members didn’t provide any explanation of how Ms. Dai violated the law in receiving her pension. The notice was signed by the “Social Insurance Agency,” with no information about the specific branch or office that was handling the case. What puzzled Ms. Dai’s husband more was that the pension was issued by the local social security bureau but that the local residential committee was demanding that he return the pension.

Eventually, the staff members forced the terrified man to sign the notice. They also showed him a table with detailed dates and amounts of the pension payments he'd taken on her behalf of his wife after her arrest. The document didn’t have an official seal or signature.

Ms. Dai’s husband tried to negotiate with the staff members by asking them to withdraw the payment from Ms. Dai’s future pension payments, after she is released. But they insisted that he return the entire amount of 53,794.76 yuan immediately.

Ms. Dai’s husband was still recovering from brain and foot surgery and he struggled to care for himself after his wife’s arrest. The frequent harassment caused him further distress. He fell ill again shortly after the harassment and was hospitalized for more surgery. Yet the residential committee staff members even went to the hospital and continued to pressure him to return the money.

Related reports:

Four Sichuan Residents Sentenced to Prison

Four Sichuan Residents Stand Trial for Their Faith in Falun Gong

Four Sichuan Residents Face Prosecution for Their Faith in Falun Gong