(Minghui.org)
Name: Wu ChuanyingChinese Name: 吴传英Gender: FemaleAge: 70City: Linli CountyProvince: Hunan ProvinceOccupation: Linli County Co-op retireeDate of Death: April 19, 2023Date of Most Recent Arrest: July 21, 2022Most Recent Place of Detention: Linli County Police Department
A 70-year-old woman in Linli County, Hunan Province died on April 19, 2023, after enduring decades of persecution for upholding her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. Ms. Wu Chuanying’s death came nine months after she was last arrested and had her home raided by police.
Ms. Wu worked at Linli County Supply and Marketing Cooperative before she retired in 2005. She used to suffer from severe neurosis, insomnia, migraine, diabetes, nephritis, and many other ailments. Years of medical treatments failed to cure her, but all her symptoms miraculously disappeared after she took up Falun Gong in 1998.
Ms. Wu never wavered in her faith after the Chinese Communist Party launched a nationwide campaign against Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. She was repeatedly persecuted as a result. Below is a recap of the major ordeals she suffered:
- She was arrested in February 2000 for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong and detained for two and half years.
- She was arrested four times between November 2004 and November 2005, and the fourth arrest in 2005 resulted in a three-year prison sentence. She managed to escape in April 2006, only to be arrested again five months later and sentenced to eight years in prison.
- While taking the train on December 5, 2016, to visit her daughter for the New Year, Ms. Wu was found to have Falun Gong materials in her bag while going through train station security. She was given five days of administrative detention.
- She was arrested again on March 12, 2020, and detained for 15 days. The police harassed her on September 5, 2020.
- She was detained for several hours on July 21, 2022.
- She also suffered financial persecution. Her pension was stopped in August 2020, six years after she was released from prison. The local social security bureau also ordered her to return the over 130,000 yuan pension payments issued to her since 2006 when she started serving her 8-year prison sentence. She filed a lawsuit against the social security bureau and the local court ruled in her favor on October 11, 2021, ordering the defendant to reinstate her pension within 20 days of the ruling. But the social security bureau refused to follow the court order and never reinstated her pension.
Ms. Wu went to Beijing in February 2000 to appeal for her right to practice Falun Gong. She was arrested after she returned to Hunan and kept at Linli County Detention Center.
Another Falun Gong practitioner who was held in the same cell once recounted the torture Ms. Liu suffered:
“One morning Ms. Wu and I did Falun Gong exercises together. Later that morning she was interrogated. When she returned to the cell, her feet were shackled and her hands cuffed behind her back. The detention center director said he’d have her handcuffs and shackles removed as long as she promised to not do Falun Gong exercises again. She said she’d keep doing Falun Gong exercises.
Two days later, the director interrogated Ms. Wu himself. He again pressured her to promise not to do Falun Gong exercises. Ms. Wu said doing exercises would keep her fit and violate no law whatsoever. The director yelled at her but she refused to budge. The director then sent her back to the cell.
On the sixth day, the director intimidated Ms. Wu again and threatened to restrain her with even heavier shackles. She again remained unmoved.
It was February and still very cold. Ms. Wu’s hands became very swollen after being cuffed for extended periods of time. The cuffs cut deep into her flesh and it was very painful. At night, she couldn’t lie down to sleep. She had to sit against the wall. I heard her breathing heavily and noted she struggled to move her body.
Another inmate and I took turns feeding her and helping her relieve herself. The guards didn’t allow her to change her clothes.
On the seventh day, I wrote a complaint against the detention center for torturing Ms. Wu. I was moved away on the ninth day, and Ms. Wu’s handcuffs and shackles were still on when I left.
I learned later she was handcuffed and shackled for ten straight days and that she was later given one year of forced labor.
The labor camp refused to admit her, and the guards kept her in the detention center for two and a half years. She went on a hunger strike to protest and they released her on the verge of death.”
Ms. Wu was arrested four times between November 2004 and November 2005. Her fourth arrest in 2005 led to a three-year prison sentence. While imprisoned, she went on a hunger strike for more than ten days in April 2006 and became very weak. The prison decided to send her to a hospital to get an IV. While en route to the hospital, she managed to escape and lived away from home to avoid further persecution.
Ms. Wu was distributing informational materials about Falun Gong on September 9, 2006, at a supermarket in Changsha (capital city of Hunan Province) when she was reported by a shopper. She was detained in Changsha for four days before being taken back to Linli County Detention Center by officer Yang Fei.
The guards instigated inmates Xin Bilan and Hu Dongmei to torture Ms. Wu, saying that only by torturing her could they receive term reductions. Ms. Wu had her hands cuffed behind her back around the clock for several days in a row. She became so weak that she couldn’t take care of herself.
The guards also didn’t allow her family to visit her.
Ms. Wu was transferred to Changsha Women’s Prison on December 5, 2006. For several days in a row, she was not allowed to sleep or use the restroom. She was handcuffed and shackled, and forced to stand for long periods of time. When it was mealtime, she was forced to kneel down and eat. Later she was also forced to do unpaid labor until midnight and only allowed one or two hours of sleep every night. She was soon reduced to skin and bones and weighed only 90 pounds.
Ms. Wu was moved back to Linli County Detention Center in 2007. Then director Liu Yaobo slapped her in the face and yanked her hair hard. She was forced to stand barefoot in the winter. She lost 20 pounds and became hunchbacked. She was short of breath and had trouble walking.
Because of her escape in April 2006, she was sentenced to 8 years by Linlin County Court on October 19, 2007 and transferred to Changsha Women’s Prison in 2008. She was released in 2014.
Ms. Wu and another Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Jin Xinchun took a bus to Xiumei Town on March 12, 2020. As soon as they stepped off the bus, they were seized by officer Xiong from the county domestic security office and officer Qiao Li from Anfu Town Police Station.
The police took the two practitioners to the domestic security office for interrogation. Their backpacks and more than 60 copies of informational materials about Falun Gong were confiscated.
Ms. Wu and Ms. Jin were next forced to go through physical examinations. Chief Gao Jun of Anfu Town Police Station then took them to his police station. He handcuffed the two together that night and they couldn’t sleep well.
The next morning, a doctor from Renmin Hospital came to the police station to give the two women COVID-19 tests. As the results were negative, Gao and several of his officers drove the two women to Taoyuan County Detention Center that afternoon. No detention notice was ever issued.
Gao and officer He Bin picked Ms. Wu and Ms. Jin up from the detention center on March 27, 2020 and drove them home.
The police showed up at Ms. Wu’s home on September 5, 2020. She refused to open the door and kept urging them to stop persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. They didn’t leave until several hours later.
On July 21, 2022, Linli County Police Department, Anfu Town Police Station, and Wangcheng Township Police Station dispatched many officers to harass local Falun Gong practitioners. Seven practitioners, including Ms. Wu, were arrested that day. Ms. Wu’s home was also ransacked. She was put on house arrest and released around 9 that night.
Ms. Wu also suffered severe financial persecution in her final years.
The Linli Human Resource and Social Security Bureau (HRSSB) suspended her pension without advance notice in August 2020, six years after she was released from prison. They also ordered her to return the over 130,000 yuan pension payments issued to her since 2006 when she started serving her 8-year sentence.
The HRSSB claimed that according to a policy issued by the labor department in 2001 and later updated in 2003, retirees serving time are not entitled to any retirement benefits. Ms. Wu argued that no Chinese labor law has such a stipulation. Even if the policy truly stands, she questioned why the HRSSB didn’t suspend her pension during her imprisonment and why it was demanding the return of already-issued pension benefits since 2006, instead of just during her 8 years of prison term.
Ms. Wu filed an application for administrative reconsideration of the HRSSB’s decision with Linli County Justice Bureau on October 20, 2020. The justice bureau refused to accept her case on the grounds that she did not submit a formal pension suspension decision letter from the HRSSB – a document that Ms. Wu did not have.
She spent months contacting the HRSSB, which agreed to issue a formal notice on January 14, 2021, about the decision to suspend her pension. By then, it had already been six months since her pension was suspended. With the formal letter, the justice bureau accepted her case.
While waiting for the ruling from the justice bureau, Ms. Wu also wrote to the provincial disciplinary team and leadership of the HRSSB, urging them to pay attention to her case, but to no avail.
On March 28, 2021, the justice bureau ruled in favor of the HRSSB in suspending her “improper financial gain.”
Ms. Wu filed an administrative complaint against the HRSSB with the local court on April 29, 2021. The court accepted the case and held a hearing on June 15. Ms. Wu argued that the pension was her lawful asset while the HRSSB, which only acted as an agent in distributing her pension, did not have the authority to suspend it.
The court issued a decision in favor of Ms. Wu on October 11, 2021, ruling that1) it was illegal for the HRSSB to suspend her pension; 2) the HRSSB shall reinstate her pension within 20 days of the ruling and rescind the decision to suspend her pension or demand the refund;3) the decision made by the justice bureau in support of the HRSSB’s pension suspension is invalidated;4) the 50 yuan of case registration fee shall be shared by the HRSSB and Linli County government.
More than two months have passed since the court’s ruling, the HRSSB was still refusing to follow the court order. As the previous HRSSB director Liu Yanju has been transferred to a new position, Ms. Wu contacted the two deputy directors, Li Qing and Zhang Xinchun, several times and urged them to reinstate her pension, but to no avail. The HRSSB also threatened on December 16, 2021, to file a civil lawsuit against her in their attempt to “recoup” the 130,000 yuan she allegedly “owed” them.
To safeguard her legal rights and stop officials from continuing bad deeds, Ms. Wu sent an open letter to government officials and related individuals. Despite her efforts, the HRSSB never reinstated her pension.
Ms. Wu Chuanying from Linli County, Hunan Province Illegally Sentenced to Eight Years in Jail