(Minghui.org) Mr. Dai Penshun, 70, is a resident of Kaiyuan City, Yunnan Province. He served two prison terms and a labor camp term, totaling 12 years, for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist government since 1999.
Mr. Dai was an employee at Kaiyuan Fertilizer Factory. He was first arrested in February 2001, and sentenced on August 11, 2001 to three years in the Yunnan No. 1 Prison. His workplace terminated his job after he was arrested.
Police searched and ransacked Mr. Dai’s home on February 11, 2005. He was detained and later taken to the Yunnan No. 2 Forced Labor Camp to serve a two-year term.
After he was released, the authorities still closely monitored his cellphone and whereabouts. His family and relatives were implicated and their careers affected. Wherever Mr. Dai worked, local police harassed his employer. As a result, Mr. Dai could not find a stable job, and moved from place to place.
His latest arrest was on May 5, 2012, when over a dozen police officers from the Domestic Security Office of Kaiyuan Police Department broke into his home and searched the place. They confiscated his computer, printer, and Falun Gong books, as well as other personal belongings. Mr. Dai was taken to the Xichen Police Station where he was tortured on a tiger bench for 14 hours. He was taken to Kaiyuan Detention Center after a physical exam the next day.
Mr. Dai was sentenced to a predetermined term of seven years at Yunnan No. 1 Prison again. As soon as he was admitted to the prison, he was put into solitary confinement for a month. He was later moved between different wards until his release in 2019.
The authorities harassed him eight times within the next six months. His pension was suspended and he was asked to return the 18,000 yuan that he already received. The authorities cited a new policy that Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for their faith are not entitled to any retirement benefits during their terms, despite Chinese labor laws having no such stipulation.
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