(Minghui.org) Ms. You Xiuying received a notice from the Shanghai Social Security Office in late November 2020 and was asked to report to them within five days with documents of her previous imprisonment for practicing Falun Gong. The notice warned that her pension would be stopped if she failed to come on time to verify her one-year prison sentence in 2016.
Knowing that the five-day deadline was only an excuse and that the authorities might just suspend her pension whether she showed up or not, the 76-year-old Shanghai resident still went to the social security office because she wanted to explain there's no legal basis to deprive her of her hard-earned pension benefits.
Ms. You said to the social security office personnel that she didn’t do anything wrong in upholding her faith, which has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. The entire prosecution of her following her arrest in 2016 was illegal and she had never signed any documents or received any formal imprisonment notice from the court.
“What I am facing is an assembly line of persecution. You illegally arrested me, illegally sentenced me, and now you are going to illegally take away my pension.” Ms. You said to the staff members.
Despite Ms. You’s appeal, the social security office staff insisted that they had to follow their supervisor’s orders and suspended her pension.
While there have been many cases of practitioners having their pensions suspended to pay back the funds they had received while serving time, Ms. You’s case is the second one confirmed in recent months, in which the social security office suspended the practitioner's pension simply with the excuse that they have been sentenced for their faith before. Another practitioner, Mr. Yang Hejiang, an 82-year-old Suining City, Sichuan Province, resident, has had his pension stopped since September 2020.
Ms. You was previously arrested in 2006 and given one year of forced labor for demanding the release of her sister, Ms. You Xiuyun, who also practices Falun Gong and was arrested.
Ms. You Xiuying was arrested again on August 26, 2016, and sentenced to one year in prison. Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong, the authorities sent her to a brainwashing center for prolonged persecution after her term ended. The police and community workers continued to harass her after she returned home.
Ms. You’s husband, in his 80s, suffers from poor health and has been given several critical condition notices in the past decade. When Ms. You was imprisoned, he struggled to care for himself. As he was living in an apartment on the sixth floor, his son rented an apartment on the first floor for him. After Ms. You was released in August 2017, the authorities forced the landlord to terminate their lease and their son had to look for another apartment for them. Just recently, Ms. You’s husband had another surgery due to a brain condition.
Related reports:
Shanghai 610 Office Threatens to Send 73-Year-Old Woman to Brainwashing Center
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