(Minghui.org) A 79-year-old woman in Chongqing had her pension suspended four months after she finished serving nine months for raising awareness of the persecution of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since July 1999.
Ms. Shen Guangxiu was arrested at home by two officers from the Xuanhua Police Station on August 26, 2022. They raided her home and took her to the Yongchuan District Detention Center that afternoon.
The Jiulongpo District Court sentenced Ms. Shen to nine months with a 1,000-yuan fine on May 23, 2023. She was released from the detention center two days later after having served the term.
The local social security office recently notified Ms. Shen that she was not eligible for an annual pension increase in 2023 and that her pension was to be suspended for nine months starting in September 2023. The total financial loss of her pension benefits would add up to 33,000 yuan.
Since Ms. Shen had already received monthly pension benefits this year before the notice, it was not clear whether she was ordered to pay back the annual increase portion of her pension.
The social security office claimed that a new policy stated that Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for their faith aren’t entitled to any retirement benefits, despite the fact that there is no such stipulation in Chinese labor law. The nine-month pension suspension was thus intended to recoup the benefits issued to her during her nine-month imprisonment.
Past Persecution
Over the past two decades of the persecution, Ms. Shen has been repeatedly arrested and detained for upholding her faith and talking to people about it.
She was arrested on August 19, 2008. She was first held at the Yongchuan District Detention Center before being transferred to the Shabao Women’s Forced Labor Camp in Chongqing to serve an unknown term.
For filing criminal complaints against Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese Communist Party leader who ordered the persecution, Ms. Shen and eight other practitioners were arrested on December 9, 2015, and held at a brainwashing session inside the Yongchuan Lockup for 15 days.
Ms. Shen traveled with her husband to visit their granddaughter, who was hospitalized for an illness, on December 27, 2018. They were stopped by the police while going through security checks at the train station. When an officer searched her bag and found a copy of Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Gong, they arrested her and called Deng Guangqi of the Yongchuan District 610 Office and director Liao of the Yongchuan District Domestic Security Office.
After taking her to the police station, the police found two MP3s with Falun Gong exercise music and two information cards about Falun Gong in her bag. Officer He Chengjun interrogated Ms. Shen. She was released at around 2 p.m.
Four officers from Xuanhua Road Police Station broke into Ms. Shen’s home on January 22, 2019. One officer surnamed Gao took dozens of Falun Gong books, two portraits of Falun Gong’s founder, and other items.
On July 28, 2021, three months after the police harassed her on April 24, Yongchuan District Domestic Security Office agents showed up at Ms. Shen’s home. Officer Liao asked her if she’d gone to Xianlong Town and the Wanshou area last month. Ms. Shen said she had not.
Liao said to her, “I’m warning you, you’d better not go out and distribute materials. If we see you doing that again, we won’t let you go. Dai Dakui was in his 80s and we still arrested him. We also arrested Tang Fenghua and Luo Mingyou. How old are you? What’s your pension? If you are jailed, your pension will be suspended.”
“I earned my pension through my hard work.” Ms. Shen responded.
“We won’t take your (Falun Gong) books and photos of your master, but we will confiscate your other materials,” they said.
As Liao was talking, officer He Chengjun confiscated 30 Falun Gong booklets, 85 yuan in paper currency with information about Falun Gong printed on the bills (as a way to raise awareness about the persecution due to strict information censorship in China), as well as some zip-lock bags she used to distribute the booklets.
Officer He returned the next day with a notice of administrative detention. He only allowed Ms. Shen to take one glance before putting it away. “Considering your age, we won’t take you to the lockup. But you have to serve the 13 days of detention at home.”
Ms. Shen saw in the notice that it said, “Reported by someone in the Zhang family.”
While Ms. Shen was cleaning her home on January 29, 2022, Luo Minquan of the Shengli Road 610 Office, You Chunyan of the Yuping Residential Committee, and several other officers came to harass her.
“We have your profile online. You aren’t allowed to go out to promote Falun Gong or give out materials anymore. If you think it’s good, you can practice at home,” You said.
“It’s exactly because I feel it’s good that I hand out information about it.” Ms. Shen replied.
Several officers from the Xuanhua Police Station harassed Ms. Shen on April 24 and again on 25, 2022, and asked her if she was still handing out Falun Gong materials.
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