75-Year-Old Shandong Woman Dies Four Years After Being Sentenced to Nine Years for Her Faith in Falun Gong

(Minghui.org)

Name: Su GuihuaChinese Name: 宿桂花Gender: FemaleAge: 75City: QingdaoProvince: ShandongOccupation: N/ADate of Death: February 7, 2023Date of Most Recent Arrest: October 16, 2017Most Recent Place of Detention: Pudong Detention Center

(Minghui.org) A 75-year-old woman in Qingdao City, Shandong Province died on February 7, 2023, about four years after she was sentenced to nine years and fined 30,000 yuan for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. 

Ms. Su Guihua

Ms. Su Guihua began to practice Falun Gong in 1997. In just a short time, she recovered from various illnesses. She actively promoted this life-changing practice to her family and friends and became a volunteer coordinator for local Falun Gong practitioners. After the persecution began, she never wavered in her faith. 

At around 1 p.m. on October 16, 2017, someone knocked on Ms. Su’s door. She opened the door, only to have more than a dozen people barge in. Some of them were in police uniform. One person flashed his ID and said they were from the Dagang Police Station. They spent the next four hours raiding Ms. Su’s home. After confiscating some personal items, they took Ms. Su and her two guests (Ms. Yu Xianrong, then 76, and Ms. Lv Yonghua, then 72, both Falun Gong practitioners as well) to the police station. 

Later that evening, another group of officers staked out Ms. Su’s home and arrested several practitioners (Mr. Gong Piqi, Ms. Hou Baoqin, Mr. Liu Wenhao, and Ms. Sun Guiqin) who came to visit her. More than a dozen other practitioners in Qingdao City were also arrested on the same day, and most of them were in their 60s or 70s.

Ms. Su felt unwell and was taken to a hospital, where she was found to have extremely high blood pressure. She was given some injections, but before she could recover, the police took her to the Pudong Detention Center on October 18, 2017. When her lawyer visited her five days later, he learned that the police were giving her large doses of injections to lower her blood pressure enough for her to remain detained. 

Ms. Su and eight other practitioners were issued formal arrest warrants one month later. The Shibei District Procuratorate indicted her, and the Shibei District Court held a hearing of her case at the detention center on June 28, 2018. Due to her health problems, Ms. Su’s feet trembled terribly during the hearing. The presiding judge, Li Jianjun, asked her if she could keep going with the hearing, and she replied, “I don’t know how long I can last in this hearing. The detention center doctor gave me six pills before the hearing.” The judge ordered the doctor to take her blood pressure. The doctor did and reported that it was 220/120. 

Ms. Su’s lawyer asked to stop the hearing right way, and the judge approved the request.

The detention center had long refused to admit Ms. Su due to her health, but the Shibei District Police Station and the Qingdao City Police Department pressured the detention center to take her and promised to be responsible should anything happen to her. While in the detention center, Ms. Su wasn’t able to take care of herself and needed help from her cellmates. Her family and lawyer made numerous requests to have her released on bail, but to no avail. Even the detention center guards felt bad for Ms. Su and wondered why the authorities would detain a frail woman in her 70s.

The court held a second hearing at the detention center on July 18, 2018. Judge Li showed no sympathy to Ms. Su this time around because of the presence of several agents from the 610 Office, an extralegal agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong. He kept interrupting Ms. Su’s lawyer’s defense arguments.

Ms. Su’s family received a phone call on September 3, 2018 and was told she was being resuscitated in Qingdao Hospital. They rushed there and were given a critical condition notice. Three days later, the police gave the family a “release on bail” notice and left the hospital.

A third hearing was held in the Jimo Second Detention Center on March 19, 2019. Ms. Su was sentenced to nine years and fined 300,000 yuan. 

Since Ms. Su was not able to serve time in prison due to her poor health, judge Li ordered that she be put under house arrest. He ordered the police to check in on her once every few months to see if she’d recovered well enough to be imprisoned. 

Ms. Su succumbed to the mental pressure and physical ailments on February 7, 2023.

She is not the only Qingdao practitioner who lost her life to the persecution. Mr. Gong Piqi, who was arrested the same day as Ms. Su, was sentenced to 7.5 years and died in Jinan Prison on April 12, 2021. 

Chief Perpetrators

Judge Li, in his 50s, has sentenced many local practitioners. His office phone number is 86-532-81606029 and his cell number is 86-18105325607.

Zhang Guoqiang, 49, is the former deputy chief of the Dagang Police Station. He oversaw the arrest of Ms. Su and other practitioners. He has been transferred to the Liaoning Road Police Station. His cell numbers are: 86-17667583897 and 86-13789866501.