(Minghui.org) Despite Ms. Liao An’an’s ongoing health struggles, the police have continued to harass the 88-year-old woman and attempted to take her into custody to serve a prison term of six years and nine months for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Liao An’an of Baiyin City, Gansu Province, was arrested at another Falun Gong practitioner’s home on January 14, 2022. She had a medical emergency when the police interrogating her that night and was rushed to the Baiyin City First People’s Hospital. The police left as soon as her son arrived.
After the ER team worked on her for over two hours, Ms. Liao’s condition finally stabilized. The ER doctors recommended inpatient care, but her son couldn’t afford it and ended up taking her home. [In China, patients are usually required to pre-pay their medical expenses before being treated.] Ms. Liao’s pension and medical insurance were canceled after her arrest for her faith in 2014. Since then her family has struggled just to make ends meet, much less afford extra bills.
Two Baiyin District Court employees showed up at Ms. Liao’s home on March 30, 2023, and set up a computer so that she could attend a virtual hearing. They arranged for the remote hearing because Ms. Liao had not recovered from her medical emergency and was still bedridden.
Two other court employees delivered her verdict to her home on September 5, 2023. Her son, who lives with her, was infuriated when he heard that the court had ordered his mother to re-serve the last three years of her second prison term in addition to the new prison sentence of three years and nine months.
Prior to her arrest in 2022, Ms. Liao was sentenced to five years following her arrest on August 18, 2008, and given another five years following her arrest on September 19, 2014. Due to health reasons, she was allowed to serve the last three years of her second term outside of prison. But now the judge ordered her to re-serve those three years plus her third prison term.
Ms. Liao appealed to the Baiyin City Intermediate Court, which ruled to uphold the original verdict.
Eight officers from the Baiyin District Domestic Security Office showed up at Ms. Liao’s home on November 7, 2023, and ordered her son to help them get her to the hospital. When he refused to cooperate, the officers went straight to Ms. Liao’s bedroom. They kept calling her name but she kept her eyes closed and said nothing. They called in a doctor, but she refused to talk to the doctor or cooperate with him when he attempted to examine her. The police left at around 11 a.m.
The police continued to harass Ms. Liao after that, at least two or three times a month since May 2024. In July 2024, Ms. Liao refused to open the door for the police when they came and they didn’t return in August. But in early September, residential committee members began to call her son and order him to open the door for them. He refused to comply, so they ordered him to take videos of his mother and send them to their office. He ignored that order as well. When they called again to have him open the door, he hung up. Both he and Ms. Liao are now living in fear due to the non-stop harassment.
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