(Minghui.org) A 70-year-old woman in Xingyang City, Henan Province, was secretly sentenced to five years in December 2021, six months after she was arrested for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Nie Junhua has been diagnosed with multiple health problems while in custody. Her family is very worried about her.
Ms. Nie was followed by the police on June 26, 2021, for talking to people about Falun Gong. When she went out again the next afternoon, the police ransacked her home when no one was around and confiscated her computer, printer, and other belongings. She was arrested and taken to the Jingcheng Police Station, interrogated for two days, and then transferred to the Zhengzhou City No.3 Detention Center.
Because Ms. Nie refused to renounce Falun Gong, the guards, who refused to accept the cash deposit her family made for her to buy daily necessities, tortured her.
On September 28, two days after Ms. Nie fainted in her cell, the guards informed her family that she had been diagnosed with high blood pressure, diabetes, disrupted blood supply to the brain, and uterine fibroids.
Her family was shocked to learn that she had developed so many symptoms after just several months of detention. Before Ms. Nie was arrested, she always had a rosy complexion, was full of energy, and looked like she was in her 50s.
Despite Ms. Nie’s condition, the authorities refused to release her and continued following the procedures to prosecute her. In December 2021, the Zhongyuan District Court secretly tried Ms. Nie and sentenced her to five years with a 20,000-yuan fine without informing her family.
When Ms. Nie became incapacitated and on the verge of death in January 2022, the guards didn’t inform her family and let them know they could visit her until February 14.
Even when Ms. Nie was taken to the hospital for an operation, the guards kept her handcuffed and shackled. Her family said she looked terrible, estimating that she appeared to have lost almost half of her weight.
It’s not clear how long Ms. Nie was in the hospital and whether she has been transferred to prison.
Past Persecution
Ms. Nie, a former government official, began to practice Falun Gong in February 1999. Because of her persistent efforts to raise awareness about the persecution, she has been arrested multiple times and previously sentenced to 2.5 years.
In 2002, she was arrested several times and beaten in custody for talking to people about Falun Gong. She was also held at the Sanlizhuang Detention Center and subjected to brainwashing. The police extorted tens of thousands of yuan from her family.
Ms. Nie was followed and arrested on May 11, 2007. Without informing her family, the police took her to the Sanlizhuang Detention Center, where she was forced to assemble lightbulbs for over ten hours a day and not given enough to eat. The guards denied her family visits and didn’t allow them to deliver daily necessities to her.
After two months of intensive labor, she was emaciated. Due to her family’s strong protests, she was released on bail in December 2007. The police still submitted her case to the prosecutor.
Ms. Nie was sentenced to 2.5 years around August 2008 and also had her pension arbitrarily suspended. She was taken back into custody at Sanlizhuang Forced Labor Camp and released on December 10, 2009.
After she returned home, her family bought the social security insurance for her so that she would get 100 yuan a month to cover some of her basic expenses, but that was suspended in January 2022.
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