(Minghui.org)
Name: Lyu ChunyuChinese Name: 吕春钰Gender: FemaleAge: 72City: DalianProvince: LiaoningOccupation: Family doctorDate of Death: October 6, 2024Date of Most Recent Arrest: November 3, 2021Most Recent Place of Detention: Liaoning Province Women’s Prison
A family doctor in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, died on October 6, 2024, three months after she was released on medical parole from serving a wrongful prison term for her faith in Falun Gong. She was 72.
After the Chinese communist regime began to persecute Falun Gong in July 1999, Ms. Lyu Chunyu was repeatedly arrested and detained for raising awareness about the persecution.
She was first arrested in 2001 for putting up posters about Falun Gong and held at the Dalian Forced Labor Camp for several months. The authorities released her after she developed a medical condition in custody.
Ms. Lyu was arrested again on September 25, 2015 for filing a criminal complaint against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime who ordered the persecution. She was released after being held at the Ershilibao Street Police Station for eight hours, only to be arrested again four days later at her clinic by police chief Lyu Zhiqiang (no relation). The police attempted to detain her at the Dalian Drug Rehab Center, but had to release her after the center refused to admit her due to her high blood pressure.
Sun Chenglin, the deputy chief of the Ershilibao Street Police Station, led three officers to break into Ms. Lyu’s clinic on November 25, 2019, taking both her and her older daughter Ms. Sun Wenjun to the police station for interrogation. At 3:30 p.m., the police handcuffed Ms. Lyu and took her to the local detention center. She was again denied admission due to a medical condition. The police held her at the police station overnight and took her to another hospital for a physical examination the next morning. The result remained the same and the detention center still wouldn’t take Ms. Lyu. Deputy chief Sun extorted 10,000 yuan from her family and released her.
Around 1:30 p.m. on May 14, 2020, Fu, the new deputy chief of the Ershilibao Street Police Station, arrived at Ms. Lyu’s home with officer Zhang Zhuoyue and another officer surnamed Gu. They brought Ms. Lyu to the Dalian Economic Development District Procuratorate. Prosecutor Yue Shubao and his secretary Jia Lu attempted to force Ms. Lyu to plead guilty. She replied that she didn’t violate any law and it’s the police who are illegally arresting good people. She also refused to sign her case document as ordered by Yue.
Ms. Lyu received a call from the Dalian Economic Development District Court on June 4, 2020 and was ordered to go there to sign some documents. She didn’t go and received another call the next morning. She still ignored it. A day later, she received a text from the court, saying that they had accepted her case. A court staffer delivered Ms. Lyu’s indictment to her clinic on June 29.
Several officers forcibly took Ms. Lyu for a physical examination on the morning of November 3, 2021. When her husband and daughter went to the Ershilibao Street Police Station to demand her release in the afternoon, the police said she had already been admitted to the Yaojia Detention Center, awaiting a court hearing.
Ms. Lyu later told her family that she was denied admission by the detention center initially, but police officers Sun and Wu Wei changed her blood pressure reading and forced the detention center to take her.
Ms. Lyu’s family received a text on November 22 announcing that a virtual hearing of her case had been scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on November 30, 2021. Her daughter called the assistant to judge Wang Qian the next day, only to be told that the hearing had already been held the day before.
Ms. Lyu’s lawyer visited her at the detention center on March 1, 2022 and learned that she had been sentenced to three years and three months. She was transferred to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison in late October 2022.
A guard from the prison’s 12th Division called Ms. Lyu’s family on November 19, 2022, telling them that she was transferred to their division on November 16 and was then in quarantine after she was found to have contracted scabies in the detention center.
A team captain called Ms. Lyu’s older daughter, Ms. Sun Wenjun, on April 12, 2024, to say that her mother had been diagnosed with obstructive jaundice and a space-occupying lesion (a mass in the cranial cavity). The prison was contacting a hospital to get Ms. Lyu admitted for inpatient care. The captain said they could discuss her condition further when her family was allowed to visit her the following month.
On May 13, 2024, two prison guards accompanied Ms. Sun’s younger sister Lili (alias) to the Jinzhou District Political and Legal Affairs Committee (an extra-judicial agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong) to discuss Ms. Lyu’s parole application. The PLAC refused to sign off on the paperwork on the grounds that Ms. Sun had refused to write statements to renounce Falun Gong.
Ms. Lyu was eventually released on medical parole in mid-July 2024. By then, she had been forced to pay 50,000 yuan for the medical treatment she received at the prison hospital. She stayed with her younger daughter and was forced to report her whereabouts twice a day and show up in person at the local justice bureau once a month. Her condition kept declining due to the ongoing pressure and surveillance. She passed away on October 6.