(Minghui.org) One year after a Fushun City, Liaoning Province went missing, his family learned that the 72-year-old man has been secretly sentenced to five years for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline also known as Falun Dafa that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Wang Pengyi went missing on June 23, 2020. His family had since lost contact with him. They learned recently that he was sentenced by the Fushun City Court and has been taken to the Kangjiashan Prison.
Mr. Wang, a demobilized military officer, worked at a subordinate agency under Fushun Food Bureau before retirement. Prior to his latest sentence, he has been arrested several times and served one year of forced labor and four years in prison. His pension was also suspended.
Mr. Wang was first arrested in mid-February 2002 for writing, “Falun Dafa is a righteous practice” on the street. He was held at the Fushun City Lockup for two weeks. He was arrested again after being reported for putting up posters about Falun Gong in late March. He held a hunger strike for seven days at the Fushun City Lockup and was taken to the hospital for force-feeding. The police took him to the Wujiabao Forced Labor Camp 13 days later to serve a one-year term.
Mr. Wang was arrested again in the spring of 2008 after being reported for talking to people about Falun Gong. He was given another 1.5-year forced labor camp term after 12 days at the Fushun City Lockup, but was rejected admission by the Masanjia Forced Labor Camp due to high blood pressure.
His next arrest was on September 2, 2015, after being reported for putting up posters about the tidal wave lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime who ordered the persecution of Falun Gong. He was sentenced to four years by the Dongzhou District Court, on charges of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used by the authorities to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners. He was taken to the Dongling Prison in April 2016.
Mr. Wang was taken to a torture room on May 16, 2016. Four guards and an inmate had been torturing several practitioners there. He tried to persuade them not to persecute the practitioners. They refused to listen, verbally abused him, and deprived him of sleep. Guard Sun Peng slapped Mr. Wang’s face and head with his shoes for an entire afternoon. His face became distorted and his head was swollen. He was disoriented and his vision became blurry.
After Mr. Wang was released on September 1, 2019, he went to the bank to take his pension. A teller told him that his pension had been suspended and he was ordered to pay back the 11 months of funds deposited to his account before the payment was stopped.
Mr. Wang went to the social security bureau to inquire about the situation. A staff member said that according to a new policy, retirees shouldn’t receive any pension while serving time. Mr. Wang argued that the pension was earned through his 30 plus years of hard work and that it’s not something bestowed by the government. In addition, after his workplace went bankrupt, he made pension contributions himself and the social security bureau was only managing the investment for him and they didn’t own it. He added that the prison term was persecution against his faith and that it’s both illegal to sentence him or suspend his pension.
Mr. Wang wrote a few letters to the leadership of the social security bureau, urging them to reinstate his pension, but to no avail.
Related report:
Two Practitioners Tortured at Dongling Prison, Shenyang City
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