(Minghui.org) A 60-year-old woman in Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province, was sued by the local social security center when she refused to return 480,000 yuan in pension benefits that the agency issued to her but is now insisting she give back because she served a seven-month prison term for practicing Falun Gong.
Ms. Jia Fengxian, born in September 1965, retired from the Zhuozhou City Landscaping and Greening Section. She took up Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline, in 1996, and credits the practice for helping her recover from many ailments, including hypertension, Meniere’s disease, heart disease, bone hyperplasia, insomnia, uterine fibroids, and lumbar disc herniation.
Because she talked to people about the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, Ms. Jia was arrested on June 20, 2016. She was forced to live away from home to avoid further persecution after she was released.
Ms. Jia was arrested again on August 22, 2019, and sentenced to seven months on September 6, 2019.
Starting in February 2026, the Zhuozhou City Social Security Center suspended her pension payments, and ordered her to return the 480,000 yuan she received.
The Social Security Center cited Notice 69, issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2012, as the legal basis for suspending Ms. Jia’s pension. Effective since November 5, 2012, the notice requires pension reduction or suspension for retirees of government agencies or state-owned enterprises who were subjected to administrative or criminal punishment.
The Social Security Center claimed that since Ms. Jia was jailed for seven months, her pension should be suspended per Notice 69.
Ms. Jia insisted that her pension was earned by her years of hard work and refused to return anything. On May 21, 2026, she received a letter from the Social Security Center, ordering her to return the money by May 30. The letter stated that if she had objections, she could apply for administrative reconsideration within sixty days from the date of receipt of the letter, or file an administrative lawsuit with a local court within six months. That afternoon, she received another notice from the Zhuozhou City Court, that she was scheduled to appear in court for her pension case on June 9. The social security center previously sued her before she got a chance to sue them.
During the hearing on June 9, Ms. Jia’s lawyer defended her, but when she was about to testify in her own defense, the judge stopped her. The lawyer representing the Social Security Center indicated that they were working to seize some of her family’s real estate to pay for her pension “debt.” It’s unclear whether the judge issued a ruling after the hearing.
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