(Minghui.org) A 72-year-old woman in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, became critically ill while serving a 3.5-year term for her faith in Falun Gong. The prison has agreed to release her on parole, but her local authorities refused to sign off on the paperwork.
Ms. Lyu Chunyu lives in Shisanfangli Community, Ershilipu Neighborhood, Jinzhou District, Dalian City. She was arrested in early November 2021 and secretly tried at the end of the month. She was later sentenced to three years and three months and admitted to Liaoning Province Women’s Prison in the capital city of Shenyang at the end of October 2022.
A team captain from the prison called Ms. Lyu’s older daughter, Ms. Sun Wenjun, on April 12, 2024, to tell her mother had been diagnosed with obstructive jaundice and a space-occupying lesion (a mass in the cranial cavity). The prison was contacting a hospital to get Ms. Lyu admitted for inpatient care. The captain said they could discuss her condition further when her family was allowed to visit her the following month.
Yu Qian (+86-411-87383819), a section chief at the Ershilipu Neighborhood Judicial Bureau, summoned Ms. Sun to his office around 9:00 a.m. on May 10, 2024. His supervisor, bureau director Wang Ruohui, was there, too, along with deputy chief Sun Chenglin (+86-18341118100, +86-144-87380357) from the Ershilipu Neighborhood Police Station (who once arrested Ms. Lyu), secretary Han Yanyan (+86-411-87384324) of the Shisanfangli Community, and a staffer from the Ershilipu Neighborhood. A stranger videotaped everything.
They ordered Ms. Sun, who is also a Falun Gong practitioner, to write a statement to renounce her faith as a precondition for the Ershilipu Neighborhood Judicial Bureau to sign the prison’s medical parole request for her mother. (The communist regime requires local authorities to sign off on parole requests for jailed Falun Gong practitioners.)
When Ms. Sun refused to comply, Yu threatened to call her husband and her daughter’s school. He also complained that, since he gave her his phone number, he had received endless phone calls from overseas Falun Gong practitioners urging him to release Ms. Lyu. He said to Ms. Sun, “We live in the CCP’s country. If you don’t like it here, then emigrate to another country with your daughter.”
Chief Sun also warned Ms. Sun, “Don’t forget that your own case is still active. Last time you were arrested, I did not pursue it because your daughter was still young and you had to take care of your father. Now your daughter is in boarding school and your father is in a nursing home, and you had the gall to go out and distribute Falun Gong materials every day. Don’t think I couldn’t recognize you from the surveillance cameras even though you had a mask on.”
According to insiders, the higher-ups offered rewards for each Falun Gong practitioner forced to renounce their faith. While the police did not arrest Ms. Sun, they likely started tapping her phone after the meeting.
On May 13, 2024, two prison guards accompanied Ms. Sun’s younger sister Lili (alias) to the Jinzhou District Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC, an extra-judicial agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong) to discuss Ms. Lyu’s parole application. The PLAC refused to sign off on the paperwork on the grounds that Ms. Sun had refused to write statements to renounce Falun Gong.
Lili and the guards went to the Ershilipu Neighborhood Judicial Bureau. Section chief Yu again declined to sign the paperwork and accused Ms. Sun of being “stubborn.” The guards implored him to approve the parole request because Ms. Lyu was dying. Yu said that he was not a medical expert and that he could not just trust the prison’s claim that Ms. Lyu was in critical condition.
The guards said they could videotape Ms. Lyu to show how ill she was, but Yu would still not agree. The guards then turned to Lili and suggested she talk her sister into giving in to Yu’s demand to write a statement to renounce Falun Gong. Lili refused, because she knew her sister would never stop practicing Falun Gong. The guards then went to Ms. Sun’s home, but she was not in. They called her but she was unable to answer the phone.
The guards then turned to the judicial bureau and PLAC in charge of Lili’s neighborhood in a different district in Dalian City. The people there appeared receptive and said they’d look into the matter.
The guards warned Lili that even if her mother was released on parole, she had to make sure Ms. Lyu not see Ms. Sun very often. If the parole request ended up being denied by Lili’s district authorities, then only she could visit her mother in prison once a month, but not her sister. Ms. Sun would not be allowed to call her mother either.
Ms. Lyu, a physician, had practiced medicine for 45 years. She took up Falun Gong in 1995 and was repeatedly targeted after the persecution began in 1999.
See the related report for details of her past persecution.
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