(Minghui.org) A married couple in Weifang City, Shandong Province, were arrested in October 2020 for their shared faith in Falun Gong and released on bail one week later. They were both sentenced to six years in prison in March 2022 but were not immediately ordered to serve time.
Three years later, the 85-year-old wife was taken to a local detention center on June 18, 2025, to start her prison term, and her 90-year-old husband was scheduled to be taken back into custody five days later. It is unclear whether he was indeed detained on June 23, 2025.
Ms. Li Ping and Mr. Liu Xuesen’s ordeal stemmed from their arrests on October 12, 2020, after street surveillance cameras recorded them putting up posters about Falun Gong. They were interrogated for two hours at the Chengguan Police Station and then released.
Four officers took them back to the police station a week later, on October 19, and changed their case status to bail release with each of them forced to pay a 1,000 yuan bond.
The police submitted the couple’s joint case to the Kuiwen District Procuratorate on December 17, 2021. They were indicted shortly after and had their case forwarded to the Kuiwen District Court.
The couple appeared in the Kuiwen District Court on February 17, 2022. They were informed by the court to pick up their verdicts on March 22, 2022: each of them was sentenced to six months and fined 5,000 yuan. The judge didn’t order them to start serving time immediately. The couple got their bail money back from the police on June 24, 2022.
Starting in December 2022, the social security bureau suspended Mr. Liu’s pension and ordered him to return the payments he had received in the past eight months. His workplace also stopped his other subsidies. They stated that his prison sentence disqualified him from receiving any retirement benefits, although no Chinese labor law has such a stipulation.
Officers from the Chengguan Police Station took the couple for physical examinations on January 2, 2024. Due to their high blood pressure, they were denied admission by the local detention center.
The police made another attempt six days later, on January 8, 2025, to admit them to the detention center and still failed.
On May 12, 2025, the police took the couple to the hospital for the third physical examination. While the detention center still refused to take them initially, they were pressured by the police to admit Ms. Li on June 18, and Mr. Liu was scheduled to be detained on June 23.
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