(Minghui.org) Two months after Ms. Zhang Yuxia was transferred to the Liaoning Province Women’s prison to serve a two-year term for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong, she lost vision in one eye and was almost blind in the other. The Yingkou City, Liaoning Province, resident also suffered a heart attack and was taken to the hospital for resuscitation.
Falun Gong is a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since July 1999.
The prison authorities denied Ms. Zhang’s medical parole and are trying to force her family to pay for her medical cost.
Ms. Zhang was first arrested on January 13, 2018, with five other Falun Gong practitioners for distributing copies of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, a book that exposes the CCP’s massacres, tyranny, and brainwashing of the Chinese people. Due to her health, she was released on bail after paying the police 5,000 yuan. The other five practitioners were held in custody and later sentenced to prison.
For the next few years, the police kept harassing Ms. Zhang. Although she was denied admission to a detention center due to severe diabetes following another arrest on April 1, 2021, the police arrested her again on September 7 that year and managed to get her in Dalian City Detention Center. She was sentenced to two years on September 14, 2021, by the Pulandian District Court and transferred to the Liaoning Province Women’s Prison on June 20, 2022.
On August 19, Ms. Zhang was forced to renounce Falun Gong against her will. Due to the physical and mental abuse in custody, she is now almost blind in both eyes and was hospitalized after a heart attack.
When her sister refused to pay her medical expenses and applied for medical parole for her instead, the prison guards denied the application, claiming that she wasn’t qualified for parole. The guards then turned to Ms. Zhang’s son and attempted to force him to pay her medical fees. He accused the guards of persecuting good people and said he couldn’t afford to pay anything, as he is struggling to make ends meet himself.
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