(Minghui.org) An 85-year-old native of Fujin City, Heilongjiang Province, has been denied pension since January 2000 for upholding her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. Her requests to reinstate her pension were repeatedly rejected.
Ms. Zhao Yaxian’s ordeal began on January 25, 2000, when she went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong. She was arrested and escorted back to Fujin. She was soon given two years of forced labor and suffered brutal torture at the Xigemu Labor Camp.
After her release in January 2002, Ms. Zhao was shocked to learn that her pension, which amounted to about 5,000 yuan per month, had been stopped soon after her arrest in 2000. She relied on her parents and siblings to get by. In 2005, she moved in with her daughter in a different city.
Years of having to rely on others for financial support caused tremendous mental pressure to Ms. Zhao. She later realized that the illegal suspension of her pension was in fact a deprivation of her right to life. She returned to Fujin in 2011 to seek the reinstatement of her pension. She approached her former employer, the Fujin City Water Bureau, the Fujin City Human Resources Bureau, the Supervision Bureau, the Discipline Inspection Commission, and the Appeals Office. They gave her the runaround, and no one addressed her concerns.
Ms. Zhao spent the next ten-plus years learning about relevant laws. She noted that both China’s Constitution and the Labor Law protect retirees’ rights to their hard-earned pension benefits, which should not be forfeited under any circumstances. With the newly acquired knowledge, she returned to Fujin again in April 2023 and approached the same group of agencies. The Fujin City Water Bureau again said they had to ask for instructions from higher-ups. A few other agencies refused to meet with her.
The social security bureau made it clear that they never enforced the law (referring to the relevant provisions from the constitution and the labor law that Ms. Zhao printed out) and that they only implemented the one policy from higher-ups to remove her from the retirees’ list back in 2000. Unless she managed to get the policy rescinded, they must still treat her as ineligible for pension.
Around February 2024, Ms. Zhao’s daughter returned to Fujin on her behalf to negotiate with the water bureau again. This time it was an entirely new leadership. A deputy director said they could issue a stipend to Ms. Zhao in the name of “stability maintenance fee.”
The communist regime has been notorious for using the excuse of “maintaining stability” to persecute Falun Gong practitioners. The water bureau intended to “shut Ms. Zhao up and stop her from making further trouble” by giving her a small stipend. She firmly refused the “deal.”
Ms. Zhao’s pension still has not been reinstated as of today.
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