Team News Riveting
The Chinese authorities have denied pension to a mainland Chinese pastor and supporter of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing.
Xu Yonghai, who had reached the retirement age of 60, recently learned from authorities that he would not be receiving monthly pension payments due to his criminal record, according to reports.
Officials told Xu in a document that the conviction had “reset” 20 years of his working history to zero, so he would have to restart the count from scratch before qualifying for pensions, it added.
Xu is an elder at the underground Divine Love Fellowship of the Beijing House Church. In 1989, he publicly voiced support for a democratic campaign in China that later ended in a bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square on June 4.
Then in 2003, he was accused of “leaking state intelligence to foreign countries” by campaigning for tortured Christians in mainland China, and was sentenced to two years in jail.
Xu said it was utterly unreasonable for the authorities to deny him his pensions. “A large part of my salary back then was given to the country, to my employer, to contribute to my pension,” he said. “The pension is definitely my own asset and now it has been taken away.”
Xu had been jobless since his release in 2006, getting by on the part-time earnings of his wife, a former nurse, said Beijing-based rights activist Ni Yulan. The lack of pensions was a heavy blow to Xu, she said.
Mainland authorities often withhold pensions and other retirement benefits as a means of suppressing dissidents.
Last August, former Central Party School professor Cai Xia was stripped of all her retirement benefits. She had given a speech that was critical of the Chinese government.
