(Minghui.org) After having served eight years in a labor camp and a prison, 70-year-old Ms. Ma Yunhua was given another nine years and fined 20,000 yuan for not renouncing her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Ma, a resident of Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, began to practice Falun Gong in 1997. She was given a one-year labor camp term in March 2000 and her company was pressured by the authorities to fire her.
When she was given another three years of forced labor in April 2001, she managed to escape from the labor camp, but was captured again months later and sentenced to seven years in Shaanxi Province Women's Prison, where she was subjected to various forms of torture, including savage beatings, water-boarding, being hung up, and deprivation of restroom use.
Ms. Ma was severely injured and traumatized when she was released in 2008. She was later arrested three more times, in 2010, 2012, and 2013, respectively. She was kept at brainwashing centers for months each time.
Because the authorities stopped her pension during her imprisonment, she went to the police station to seek compensation in April 2014, only to be arrested again.
She escaped from a hospital during a health checkup that was required for further detention, and was then put on a nationwide wanted list as a fugitive.
After her latest arrest on February 6, 2018 for talking to people about Falun Gong, the police reopened her case and vowed to give her a heavy prison term.
Ms. Ma appeared in Lianhu District Court on November 1, 2018 and was convicted on August 22, 2019.
Her older sister, who is deaf and in her 80s, frequented different agencies to seek her released, only to be threatened by the police.
Ms. Ma has appealed her sentence.
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Ma Yunhua Brutally Tortured at Shaanxi Province Women's Prison