(Minghui.org) On May 5, 2021, two days after Ms. Liang Yun, a 67-year-old Qujing City, Yunnan Province resident, finished serving a four-year prison term for practicing Falun Gong, she received a call from her previous workplace and told to go to the Qujing City Social Security Bureau to sign a document to reinstate her suspended pension.
Falun Gong is a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Liang had no idea that her pension had been suspended. She went to the social security bureau on the next day. Director Yang Honggang showed her a document which said that she must return the pension benefits issued to her during her latest 4-year prison term (April 2017 to May 3, 2021) and a previous 5-year prison term (between 2000 and 2005), before new pension payments could be issued. Yang claimed that according to a new policy, she wasn’t entitled to any retirement benefits while serving time in prison.
Yang also told Ms. Liang that her pension between July 2019 and May 2021 had already been suspended. Given that, the remaining pension benefits during her two prison terms that the social security bureau sought to claw back amounted to 230,000 yuan.
Yang threatened to report her to the police if she didn’t turn in the money in ten days. Ms. Liang’s husband, who went with her, was petrified. He trembled and was unable to utter a word.
Knowing the mental pressure her family has suffered in the persecution of her faith, Ms. Liang didn’t want them to worry about her being reported to police and arrested again. She agreed to return 90,000 yuan first. But Yang claimed that it wasn’t enough and he ordered her to return at least half of the claw-back fund.
Ms. Liang’s family managed to borrow 120,000 yuan to turn in to the social security bureau. Yang then demanded Ms. Liang sign an agreement for them to deduct the remaining fund from her future pension payments. After rounds of negotiation, Yang agreed to give her 800 yuan each month to cover her basic living cost and the remaining portion of her pension would be used to pay for the “debt.”
Yang also added a sentence in there reading, “Should the pensioner die before paying off the debt, the debt balance must be deducted from the burial cost subsidy and survivors’ benefits.” [in China, a one-time burial cost subsidy and survivors’ benefits are issued to the deceased pensioner’s family.] Ms. Liang was forced to sign the agreement.
Upon returning home, Ms. Liang regretted having compromised with the authorities. She wrote a letter to the social security bureau and explained that the pension is her personal asset earned through her decades of hard work. The social security bureau was only managing the fund for her, and there is no legal basis for them to arbitrarily suspend it. She added that her right to receive a pension should be protected and no Chinese labor law allows the social security bureau to suspend a retiree’s pension because of their prison sentence.
In the letter, Ms. Liang also listed the laws and regulations that the social security bureau had violated. Her arguments were similar to those listed in this article.
She also wrote that she used to suffer many ailments, from head to toe. She was also sensitive to antibiotics and the doctor couldn’t treat her. She usually avoided going out by herself, fearing she may faint on the street at any time. Her family lived under tremendous pressure to care for her. But only two weeks after she took up Falun Gong in 1999, all of her conditions disappeared and she gained a new lease on life. Her gratitude for the practice is beyond words. But because she perseveres in her faith, she has been arrested multiple times and twice sentenced to prison.
It’s not clear whether the social security bureau responded to her letter.
Related reports:
Woman Twice Imprisoned for Nine Years for Her Faith
“Strict Discipline” of Falun Gong Practitioners in Yunnan No. 2 Women's Prison
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