(Minghui.org) Ms. Li Xiuqin has been suffering from a hernia, yet the prison guards are still forcing her to perform unpaid labor. Her family is very worried about her.

Ms. Li, a 59-year-old resident of Xianghe County, Hebei Province, was arrested on August 5, 2018 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. She was tried by the Xianghe County Court in April 2019 and judge Li Xiuqin sentenced her to four years and fined her 20,000 yuan on September 29, 2019.

Judge Li Shufen at the Langfang Intermediate Court ruled to uphold her sentence without holding a hearing on December 20, 2019. She was taken to Shijiazhuang Women’s Prison on January 3, 2020.

Ms. Li’s family recently learned that she has been suffering from a hernia lately. Her abdomen was severely bloated and she had to support it with her hands. Despite her condition, the guards still ordered her to do unpaid labor, while not giving her enough to eat or the daily necessities she needed.

Ms. Li’s latest ordeal was preceded by years of persecution for her faith in Falun Gong. Her husband, also a Falun Gong practitioner, was targeted as well. Their son was ten years old when the police raided their house in 2003. Three years later, Ms. Li was fired from her job because she refused to give up her belief. The family fell into a dire financial situation.

Ms. Li was arrested on July 28, 2009 after her son, then 16, answered the door and several police officers barged in. The teen witnessed the police twisting his mother’s arms and dragging her by the hair all the way down from the fifth floor. Her son blamed himself for opening the door to strangers, resulting in her arrest. The mental burden and traumatising experience haunted him. He was further traumatised when his parents were both arrested on October 22, 2011, just a few months into his college freshman year. His mother’s latest arrest in 2008 took place a few years after he graduated from college.

 

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