(Minghui.org) After a court hearing on February 9, 2021, a 74-year-old woman in Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province, was taken back into custody on May 6 and is being held in the Suzhou Detention Center. Ms. Wang Zhifang’s family suspects that the authorities are planning to sentence her soon.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Ms. Wang went around town to distribute information on how the Chinese Communist Party covered up the cases, using tactics similar to those used in the persecution of her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been targeted since July 1999.
Because of the massive surveillance network in town, the police tracked down Ms. Wang and arrested her on April 9, 2020. They ransacked her home and then released her on bail.
The police later submitted her case to the Zhangjiagang Procuratorate, which accepted it on December 7, 2020.
Prior to her latest ordeal, Ms. Wang was previously arrested in 2002 and held in the Changfangshan Brainwashing Center. She was arrested and taken to the brainwashing center again in 2005 after a letter she sent to a relative with information about Falun Gong was intercepted and turned over to the police.
In August 2014, she was followed and arrested for making phone calls to people to clarify the facts about Falun Gong. She was sentenced to three years and three months in prison. The guards there forced her to undergo intensive brainwashing and do long hours of unpaid labor.
In May 2020, the authorities claimed that, according to a new policy, she wasn’t entitled to any pension payments during her prison term, even though there is no Chinese law to that effect. They ordered her to pay back the 112,751.6 yuan she had received during her imprisonment. After she refused to comply, the authorities withheld 22,360 yuan from her pension between May and December 2020. To collect the remaining 90,391.6 yuan, the authorities are deducting 1,500 yuan a month from her pension until 2025. The final payment in December 2025 is to be 1,891.6 yuan.
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