(Minghui.org) Minghui.org previously reported on the ordeal of Ms. Jiang Yifen, who was ordered to return 18 years of pension totaling 360,000 yuan because she was twice jailed for a total of seven years for practicing Falun Gong.
This article provides additional information about the 72-year-old woman’s practice of Falun Gong and her imprisonment.
Ms. Jiang, of Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, entered the workforce in 1976 when she was 23 years old. Her job at a power plant involved voltage measurement, testing, switching, and meter recording of equipment such as steam turbines and boilers.
The high-intensity job took a toll on her health. She contracted various illnesses before the age of 40, including neurasthenia, headaches, gallstones (which led to acute stomach and back pain), stomach problems, and Behcet’s disease (a rare, chronic disorder causing systemic blood vessel inflammation and oral ulcers). She struggled to do her job and felt despaired.
After she took up Falun Gong in the autumn of 1995, Ms. Jiang gradually recovered from all her illnesses.
Upon learning that the police in Tianjin arrested some Falun Gong practitioners in April 1999, she went to Beijing on April 25 to appeal to the State Council’s Appeals Office.
After the communist regime formally launched the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, Ms. Jiang went to the provincial government in Harbin to appeal. She was put on the government’s blacklist.
A neighbor reported her April trip to Beijing to the police on July 25, 1999. They arrested her that day and detained her for 15 days.
After another arrest on December 27, 2001, Ms. Jiang was sentenced to four years by the late judge Ye Lijun from the Acheng District Court in June 2002. The Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison initially declined to admit her after the required physical exam indicated her systolic blood pressure was 210 mmHg (a normal range is 120 or lower). But the court soon pressured the prison to take her.
Ms. Jiang’s term ended on December 26, 2005. Officer Qu Yanwu took her to the local police station to take her photo and collect her fingerprints, before allowing her to go home.
Ms. Jiang was arrested again on March 3, 2022, and sentenced to another three years. She was admitted to the same Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison in January 2023. The guards beat her and didn’t allow her to sleep, shower, or use the restroom for long periods of time.
After she was released on March 2, 2025, she had surgery to remove severe kidney cysts (as a result of limited restroom use in prison).
Heilongjiang Woman in Her 70s Sentenced to Three Years for Distributing Falun Gong Materials