(Minghui.org) Police in Haicheng City arrested an elderly Falun Gong practitioner for telling a student about the communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong, a meditation and spiritual practice first taught in China in 1992.
The practitioner was taken to Gangtie Police Station on June 14, 2017. She was tried by Haicheng City Court on April 16, 2018. She is in her seventies and currently held at Anshan City Woman’s Detention Center for refusing to renounce her faith.
Before she learned Falun Gong, Ms. Pan Yujun had gallbladder inflammation and was debilitated by nerves and exhaustion. She credited the practice of Falun Gong with healing her ailments.
After the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999, she was arrested multiple times and detained for months, imprisoned for a total of 13 years, and subjected to unspeakable torture.
Ms. Pan went to Beijing to protest the persecution and was arrested on October 15, 1999. She was held at Haicheng Detention Center for 37 days and tortured.
When she went to Beijing again in December, police took her back and beat her for 12 hours until she went into shock. She was detained and sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp. Her family bribed the authorities and spent 12,000 yuan to have her released after 15 days.
This pattern would repeat throughout the years to come: police would arrest her for illegal reasons and torture her in order to force her family to pay money in exchange for her freedom.
Ms. Pan was arrested and detained in the autumn of 2000 as she was giving out Falun Gong literature. Police put the heaviest shackles on her for refusing to give up her faith. The next day, a male staffer shocked her with an electric baton from six in the morning to seven in the evening. The next staffer who came in continued shocking her until her head was swollen and her flesh was burnt. In the end, the staffer stuck the electric baton in her mouth and blistered the inside of her oral cavity. Her family again bribed the authorities to have her released after 37 days.
Ms. Pan returned to Beijing in November 2000 to petition the central government. Again she was taken back to Haicheng and detained. She was released 37 days later after her husband brought in the cash. Her husband had to rescue her two other times in March and October 2001 after she left home to distribute materials to tell people about the persecution.
Ms. Pan was arrested in April 2002 in Yingkou City at another practitioner’s house. She was detained for 11 months and given eight years in Liaoning Woman’s Prison on March 13, 2003. A guard once shocked her with an electric baton until her nose and mouth bled profusely for three days. She eventually went into shock.
Ms. Pan was forced to do labor every day until one or two in the morning. She was viciously beaten for nine months because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. She was released early in April 2009 after her family bribed the authorities.
Her last imprisonment was on March 1, 2011, after she was arrested for distributing Falun Gong literature. She was sentenced to five years and released in November 2014.
