(Minghui.org) Just a few months after Ms. Li Xia completed a 1.5-year wrongful sentence for practicing Falun Gong, she was devastated to see her pension being suspended because her prison sentence “disqualified” her from receiving the benefits.
The ordeal of Ms. Li, of Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, stemmed from her arrest on July 25, 2023. While she and another practitioner, Ms. Li Mengjun, in her 70s, were talking to a retired teacher about Falun Gong, a group of officers suddenly showed up, took photos of them, and took them to the Nanqiao Police Station.
At noon, several officers from the Gucheng District Case Processing Team arrived and handcuffed both women behind their backs. When Ms. Li Xia resisted, two officers threw her headfirst onto the floor. She was unable to utter a sound after the fall, yet the police accused her of pretending. They lifted her up and threw her to the floor again.
Both women were admitted to the Anqing Detention Center in Pi County later that day. During a court hearing on August 20, 2024, they testified in their own defense and argued that no law in China has ever criminalized Falun Gong. Yet the judge still sentenced Ms. Li Mengjun to three and a half years, and Ms. Li Xia to one and a half years.
Ms. Li Xia was released on January 24, 2025. In June 2025, the Social Security Bureau stopped her pension payments. She went to the bureau to ask about the case, and was told that the decision had been made to claw back the retirement benefits she had received during her prison term. At the same time, the authorities denied her application to renew her low-income housing.
Ms. Li wrote to the Social Security Bureau on July 16, 2025, demanding to know the legal basis for suspending her pension, but she was stonewalled.
In addition to this latest round of persecution, Ms. Li has been repeatedly targeted over the past 27 years for practicing Falun Gong.
She was arrested in November 2001 and detained for one month, during which time her son, still in middle school, had to fend for himself. After another arrest on March 8, 2008, Ms. Li was given one year of forced labor at the Nanmusi Women’s Labor Camp. Because she held firm to her faith, her term was extended, for a total of 444 days of incarceration. Due to the brutal torture she suffered in detention, Ms. Li became severely near-sighted. The police harassed her again on August 9, 2022, and deceived her into signing a statement to renounce Falun Gong.
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