(Minghui.org) A 60-year-old retiree in Yantai City, Shandong Province was forced to pay back the more than 100,800 yuan in pension benefits received during her four-year prison sentence, just days after she was released on September 15, 2021.
Ms. Pan Rongqing was arrested on September 15, 2017 for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. The Laishan District Procuratorate approved her arrest on October 19 and received her case from the police on December 18, 2017. While the Procuratorate twice returned her case to police citing insufficient evidence, it proceeded to indict her on June 29, 2018 after the police resubmitted the case.
The Laishan District Court tried Ms. Pan on May 17, 2019 and sentenced her to four years in prison. She filed an appeal, and the Yantai City Intermediate Court ruled on August 19, 2019 to overturn the original verdict, and ordered a retrial. The Laishan District Court didn’t hold a retrial until September 2, 2020 and gave her the same sentence of four years in prison on November 2 of that year.
Ms. Pan served three years and five months at the Yantai City Detention Center before being transferred to the Shandong Province Women’s Prison in 2021 to finish the remainder of her prison term.
After Ms. Pan was released in September 2021, she told her husband that the prison guards confiscated her two verdicts (the original and the one issued after retrial) so she couldn’t file a motion to reconsider her case. Her husband said that the authorities had never given him a copy of her verdicts. The only official document he received was a copy of her arrest warrant.
Just a few days after she returned home, the local social security office called her husband saying that she needed to return the pension benefits received during her four-year imprisonment, citing a policy that bars retirees from receiving retirement benefits while serving time. The couple argued that the benefits were Ms. Pan’s lawfully earned assets and should not be forfeited under any circumstances. The social security office insisted on clawing back the already-issued pension benefits and kept calling her husband. He ended up paying more than 100,800 yuan as requested.
During the communist regime’s two annual political conferences in March 2023, the local police station called Ms. Pan’s husband saying they needed to see her and take a photo of her. She immediately left home. Her husband told her later that two officers descended on their home the moment she left. The police video-recorded every corner of the home and said to him that they had to do it per orders from higher-ups.
Another two officers pulled up their cruiser to Ms. Pan’s home in August 2023 and demanded to see her. She was not home and they left.
Ms. Pan recently recounted her ordeal as below.
I had just returned home at noon on September 15, 2017 when I heard knocks on the door. I saw through the peephole a man holding a cell phone in his hand and a woman in her late 20s. A group of officers soon joined the pair and pounded on the door. I refused to open the door and the knocking stopped about half an hour later.
At around 1:30 p.m., however, the police pried open my door and broke in (I learned later they called in two locksmiths). They cuffed my hands behind my back to a bed. While they raided my home, they had the young woman watch me. She didn’t allow me to use the restroom.
The police confiscated 40,000 yuan in cash, three printers, two paper cutters, and two laptop computers. They put the items in a wooden chest of mine and carried it away.
They then brought me downstairs to my shed, where they confiscated twenty cases of copy paper, five copies of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, a few charm amulets, one box of calendars printed with Falun Gong messages, and seven Falun Gong banners.
I was next taken to the Shengquan Police Station in Laishan District. I demanded my 40,000 yuan back, and one officer promised to give it to me later. But the police have never returned the money to me.
I refused to answer the police’s questions during interrogation. After a little while, I couldn’t open my eyes, and my limbs also seemed to be out of commission. I then felt nauseous and vomited. A police woman wondered out aloud, “Why has her [referring to me] tummy suddenly became so bloated?” I kept vomiting and several officers then drove me to a hospital.
The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, and the police carried me back to their cruiser. I fainted on the way back and woke up when we arrived at the police station. The police dragged me out of the car and kicked me. They accused me of faking the fainting and asked me to walk by myself.
I still felt weak all over my body and couldn’t move. The police carried me to an interrogation room and sat me down in a chair.
Another officer came in and hit me on the neck with a water bottle. It hurt severely and I warned him that he was breaking the law by beating me. He began to interrogate me and I refused to answer his questions. A different officer was then called in to interrogate me and I still refused to reveal any of the information he requested.
A few other officers later dragged me to another room and forcibly collected my fingerprints. They dragged me so hard that my clothes were ripped.
I was then taken to the Yantai City Detention Center. Two police officers came to interrogate me about two weeks later. I shared with them how I benefited from practicing Falun Gong. They asked what Falun Gong materials I had at home. I refused to answer their questions or sign their interrogation records. They then left.
Someone from the Laishan District Procuratorate came to depose me at the detention center on October 18, 2017. He ordered me to sign an arrest warrant and I refused. I learned later that I was formally arrested the next day.
I started a hunger strike after the Procuratorate worker left. The head guard was unable to make me eat so she reported the matter to the detention center director. The director had a talk with me but I still refused to eat.
On the fourth day of my hunger strike, the director ordered several detention center doctors to force-feed me with help from a few inmates. They held me down but couldn’t get the food into me after multiple attempts. They then called in an older, more experienced doctor. He managed to force-feed me through a thick tube. I struggled to breathe during the force-feeding.
By the time the tube was taken out, it was covered with blood. The director video-recorded everything with her cell phone and threatened to show the clip to my pregnant daughter.
That night the older doctor asked if I’d like to eat dinner. I said no and he threatened to use a different way to force-feed me, as the tube had broken the membrane in my esophagus and he could no longer take it out after each force-feeding session. My cellmates all advised me to resume eating because they had witnessed the alternative force-feeding, in which the victim was restrained in a bed with a feeding tube remaining in her stomach all day long. The victim then had to relieve herself in bed.
I then agreed to eat again. My cellmates, totaling more than two dozen, later told me that they all cried when the doctors were force-feeding me.
There was no air conditioning (not even an electric fan) in the summer and no heat in the winter. I had heat rashes during the three summers I was held in the detention center. A guard once had heat stroke not long after he stepped into my cell. The fact that the small cell held up to 25 people only made each summer more miserable.
I was forced to do hard labor without pay for one year and four months, during which time I had to work every day, and soon developed blisters on my hands. The guard in charge forced me and other inmates to work even during breaks.
For some unknown reasons, the detention center one day suddenly notified the guards to stop forcing detainees to do hard labor. We were then ordered to recite detention center rules, and those who couldn’t memorize the rules were to be punished by standing for long periods of time. I refused to recite the rules or do physical exercises. The head guard didn’t press me to follow their orders.
The detention center guards didn’t allow me to do the Falun Gong exercises, and I began to feel pain in my left armpit. I then had a dream of doing the exercises and felt very good. I told the head guard later that I needed to do the Falun Gong exercises to stay healthy. She agreed and I was then able to do the exercises beginning the seventh month at the detention center. The head guard simply pretended she didn’t see me whenever I did the exercises.
Another guard twice spotted me doing the Falun Gong exercises while she was on duty. She put me on strict management and didn’t allow me to do the exercises again. Each time my armpit condition worsened. It hurt so much that I woke up in the middle of the night and struggled to get out of bed in the morning. The head guard called in a doctor to take a look, but I wasn’t given any treatment.
Despite my condition, I was still ordered to be on a two-hour night shift. I told the head guard that I must do the Falun Gong exercises to improve my health. She agreed and the pain in my armpit soon disappeared. Having witnessed Falun Gong’s miraculous healing power, the guards stopped bothering me when I did the exercises.
I appeared in the Laishan District Court on May 17, 2019. My lawyer entered a not guilty plea for me.
When the prosecutor presented the evidence against me, I noted that the police had exaggerated the amount of items confiscated from my home. The five copies of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party were changed to 48, the few charm amulets were increased to more than 400, and the 7 Falun Gong banners became more than 100 banners.
I pointed out the fabricated evidence to the prosecutor but he ignored me and recommended 8-9 years since I refused to admit “guilt” in practicing Falun Gong.
I was sentenced to four years in prison about two weeks later and I immediately decided to file an appeal.
Inmates were usually given ten days to write an appeal, but the detention center guards gave me less than three days, and I could only write my appeal when the head guard was on duty. Each time when she took off from work, she’d also take away the pen and paper, which no inmate was to have without supervision. I thus was unable to include all I wanted to say in my appeal. I nonetheless managed to submit my appeal.
Two people from the Yantai City Intermediate Court came to the detention center to verify my appeal around July 2019. They also showed me a search warrant and asked if the police had ever shown it to me. I said no. The two people then produced a photo showing a table on which a black bag was placed next to two dozen copies of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party. I immediately said I never owned such a black bag. I began to explain how the police had exaggerated the amount of confiscated items. The two court workers then asked me to sign on their deposition of me.
One day during the break time, a guard asked me to sign the intermediate court’s ruling to overturn my original verdict and have a retrial. I signed because I thought such a ruling was a signal for the trial court to acquit me.
While the intermediate court issued its ruling on August 19, 2019, the Laishan City Court didn’t hold a retrial until September 2, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my family wasn’t able to hire a lawyer for me, and was not allowed to attend the virtual hearing.
I was shocked to hear the “new evidence” against me. Additional items were said to have been confiscated from my home. There was also a video showing “me” confessing to “my crime” during the police interrogation at the Shengquan Police Station on September 15, 2017.
I told the judge and prosecutor that I never owned the so-called additional items. I demanded to watch the video. The prosecutor couldn’t make it work and the judge recessed the hearing for half an hour. After the session resumed, the prosecutor showed the video. The screen was very small but the judge claimed that they couldn’t zoom it in to show more details.
The video showed a woman shorter than me and with a fairer skin walking to the interrogation room, but I was carried into the room because I was too weak. The woman was wearing a top that I did not wear when I was interrogated.
I saw that the woman in the video was tying her hair in front of a mirror. I did do the same after I was taken back to the police station from the hospital that day because my hair had been messed up when the police carried me in and out of the hospital. The woman’s hands, however, were more pale and chubbier than mine.
I became confused and wasn’t sure that the woman in the video was not me. The judge didn’t say anything about the video and asked me a few other questions. Before ending the session, she asked me if I had anything to say. I said I wanted to hire a lawyer.
After the hearing, I recalled every detail of it and then realized the video was fabricated to frame me as having confessed to a crime, and the woman in the video was definitely not me. I also remember clearly that I was forced to fingerprint a one-and-half-page-long interrogation records at the police station but I didn’t sign it. I thus refused to sign the court proceedings when the guards presented them to me a few days later.
During the second hearing of the retrial on November 2, 2020, I defended myself, as my family was unable to find a lawyer to represent me. The prosecutor continued to present the same fabricated evidence against me and didn’t allow me to talk. Whenever I managed to talk, the judge accused me of speaking too fast and cut me off.
The prosecutor recommended an eight to nine-year prison sentence and the judge sentenced me to four years in prison again at the end of the second hearing.
I got a pen and paper from the guards to write my appeal but eventually gave up as I felt hopeless whenever I thought about how the judge still sentenced me when it was so apparent that the police had fabricated evidence against me.
I regretted my decision to not file the appeal when I heard a cellmate say that giving up the appeal would be equivalent to admitting guilt. I then asked a guard for a pen and paper to write a motion to reconsider my case. The guard asked why I didn’t file an appeal in the first place and I said that I had missed the deadline to submit an appeal.
She never gave me anything to write my motion with, and instead lied to me saying that inmates were not allowed to write a motion at the detention center. She said I could write one once I was admitted to prison.
I was transferred to the Shandong Province Women’s Prison in February 2021. I brought the two verdicts with me, but the prison guards confiscated them. They also told me that I must acknowledge I was a criminal before I would be allowed to write a motion to reconsider my case. I of course would not acknowledge that I broke any law and was thus unable to write a motion.
The prison guards took turns talking to me and recording what I said to them. The head guard in charge of my cell threatened to teach me a lesson because I had been put on strict management three times in the detention center.
I once refused to do physical exercises as ordered, and the head guard whipped out her electric baton. The baton suddenly fell apart with its parts scattering all over the place. She was stunned and embarrassed. She picked up the parts and no longer required me to recite prison rules or do other things required of other inmates. Her attitude towards me also improved. She was later transferred away.
About one month into my prison admission, I was reassigned to Division 11, which was designated to persecute steadfast Falun Gong practitioners. I was held in a small room with a small bed and a small stool. Two inmates were assigned to watch me and they ordered me to sit on the stool motionless. They also tried to force me to sign and fingerprint some statements they prepared, to renounce Falun Gong. I refused and they got a few more people to hold me down. They got my fingerprints and I said that I did not acknowledge the statements at all.
To purchase daily necessities or use the toilet, inmates must put in a written request acknowledging they were criminals in the first place.
I refused to write such requests and was held in solitary confinement for 47 days, during which time I was not allowed to wash myself. In order to not use the restroom, I drank very little water every day, yet I didn’t feel thirsty at all.
There was one day when I didn’t use the restroom at all. The two inmates monitoring me became worried and said I could use the restroom. I said no, and they warned me that I may develop uremia if I hold my urine for too long. I still refused to use the restroom as a way of protest. The guard in charge eventually allowed me three restroom breaks each day.
As I held firm to my faith, the guards got a former practitioner named Song Chunmei to “work on” me. Song played videos that slandered Falun Gong every day. I refused to watch and she grabbed my hair to try to turn my head towards the screen. She also asked me questions but I ignored her. She then barred me from using the restroom. When I said that the guards had given me three restroom breaks per day, she replied that I had to hold my pee as long as I refused to answer her questions.
When Song failed to make me renounce my faith, the guards asked a large woman to “teach me a lesson.” The woman grabbed me by the collar and dragged me to a solitary room. I got away by saying that I needed to use the restroom first.
A month later, the two inmates assigned to watch me thought of a new tactic to torture me. They placed a pre-written statement renouncing Falun Gong on my back and then twisted my right arm behind my back to press my fingerprints on the statement. I screamed in pain and they turned up the TV volume, shut the windows, and stuffed my mouth with a rag used to mop the floor. They also covered my nostrils with their fingers.
They did this to me twice a day for one straight week. Though I was in extreme pain each time, I stood my ground and never yielded to their demand to write a statement giving up my belief.
The prison guards also used different ways to stop me from sleeping at night. One tactic used was to have the inmate on night shift wake me up every five minutes every night.
They later forced me to sit on a small stool all day long, but stand at night. After one month of such sitting, my buttocks festered and felt like being pricked by needles. In the last few days of the one-month sitting, they had me sit on only half of the stool, with two other people squeezed in next to me. A third person held me in place with her feet to prevent me from falling off the stool.
Another tactic they used was removing the mattress and only leaving the bedsheet at night. I was “allowed” to sleep but not allowed to turn my body. As soon as I turned, the inmate on night shift flipped me back, to sleep on my left side. As I was not allowed to do the Falun Gong exercises, the tumor under my left armpit was growing bigger and bigger. Sleeping on my left side pressed against the tumor and I couldn’t sleep at all. The inmate claimed that she was checking in on me at night when she slipped me to my left side, when in fact it was sleep deprivation in disguise.
A head inmate once forced me to drink a bowl of water and I vomited it all out afterwards. Now thinking back, it was not water, but an unknown liquid drug, as it didn’t taste right.
Twenty days before the end of my prison term, I was moved to Division 14 and forced to do hard labor there. The work quota kept increasing each day. I was not allowed to shower whenever I failed to finish the quota.
In addition to my armpit tumor, the prison doctor had also diagnosed me with high blood pressure, lymphoma, and hemangioma. I was never given any treatment.
By the time of my release on September 15, 2021, the tumor under my left armpit had grown to be the size of my breast. My legs also couldn’t move and I had trouble turning over my body. Fortunately, through doing the Falun Gong exercises and reading Falun Gong books, I soon recovered and the tumor disappeared by itself.
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