(Minghui.org) When Jiang Zemin, the now-deceased former head of the Chinese Communist Party, ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, he issued three persecution policies, “Destroy them [Falun Gong practitioners] physically, ruin their reputation, and bankrupt them.” In recent years, the financial persecution of Falun Gong practitioners has become ever more rampant, especially by way of the suspension of the practitioners’ pensions.
In China, urban workers start receiving pensions when they reach retirement age. The pension system consists of three pillars, including the government-sponsored pension, the voluntary employer-sponsored pension, and voluntary private savings. The first two pillars are centrally managed and distributed by the social security bureaus.
In recent years, many Falun Gong practitioners either have had their pension suspended while serving wrongful prison terms for their faith or are ordered to pay back the pension they received during their prison terms before they could receive new payments again. Worse still, many were fired from their jobs for upholding their faith and had their decades of service wiped out, rendering them unqualified to receive any pension.
Below are five cases of Falun Gong practitioners who suffered financial persecution in Jilin City, Jilin Province.
Mr. Guo Yunqing, his wife Ms. Du Hongfang, and their son Mr. Guo Fengqing used to be a happy family. But since the persecution started in 1999, the elder Mr. Guo was arrested multiple times and sentenced to 14 years following his latest arrest in 2007. Ms. Du became paralyzed after being jailed and tortured for eight years, and their son was forced out of school and faced discrimination everywhere he went.
Ms. Du Hongfang and her 12-year-old son before the persecution.
Ms. Du Hongfang after becoming incapacitated due to torture in prison.
The Social Security Bureau stopped the elder Mr. Guo’s pension in June 2020 and Ms. Du’s in July. The authorities said that for those who served time in prison, their years of employment before 1987 wouldn’t be counted in pension calculation, and for their employment after 1987, the years they spent in prison would be deducted.
Mr. Guo started to work in 1976 and Ms. Du in 1986. They served 14 years and eight years in prison, respectively. Mr. Guo thus got 25 years (11 years before 1987 plus his 14 years of prison term) deducted from his 45 years of service (as of 2020). Ms. Du had 9 years (1 year before 1987 plus her eight years of prison term) deducted from her 35 years of service (as of 2020). With so little left after the deductions, the authorities simply suspended their pension payments.
In addition to the suspended pension, the couple also had more than 100,000 yuan confiscated from them during a police raid in 2007, which further worsened their financial predicament.
Ms. Wen Shujie has congenital spinal curvature. She was arrested on April 25, 2009, and later sentenced to seven years. While serving time at the Heizuizi Women’s Prison, she was subjected to intensive brainwashing and forced to sit on a small stool motionless for long hours. She served the full term and was released on April 24, 2016. The Social Security Bureau suspended her pension in July 2020.
Ms. Mi Hong, 58, was given a three-year labor camp term in the early years of the persecution and sentenced to five years in 2008. She was brutally tortured at the Heizuizi Forced Labor Camp and the Jilin Province Women’s Prison. In the first half of 2024, the Jilin City Human Resources and Social Security Bureau claimed that her years of service had been set to zero and that she was obligated to return the 180,000 yuan pension she had received in the past few years.
Mr. Ma Ping, former director of the Jilin Agricultural Bank Supervision Office, was sentenced to four years by the Fengman District Court in March 2009. The police continued to harass him after he was released. Also in the first half of 2024, the Jilin City Human Resources and Social Security Bureau removed the four years of his prison sentence from his service record. His working years before the pension reform to centralize everything under the Social Security Bureau were deducted from the record because his workplace only began to make monthly contributions to his pension account under the Social Security Bureau after the pension reform. The reduction of his service years severely lowered his pension tier and corresponding payment.
Mr. Ma Ping
Ms. Li Liwen, a retired teacher in her 60s, was arrested on July 19, 2019, and sentenced to three years in November of that year. She found out when she was released on April 21, 2022, that her pension had been suspended.
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