(Minghui.org) A 21-year-old woman was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for spreading information about Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime.
Ms. Li Huimin, a Fujian Province native, is a senior majoring in bioengineering at Dali University in Yunnan Province. Her appeal against the guilty verdict has been turned down.
Ms. Li was arrested on January 12, 2016, three days after she gave her classmates some flash drives containing information about Falun Gong. One classmate reported her to the instructor Zhao, who then alerted school security, which wasted no time getting the Dali Police Department involved.
The young woman’s parents called Zhao on January 21 after losing contact with her. Only then did they learn of Ms. Li’s arrest.
Ms. Li’s parents called Zhao again the next day after receiving a detention notice from the police department. Zhao admitted that he reported Ms. Li for fear of getting implicated.
Dali Police Department issued a formal arrest warrant on February 8 and forwarded Ms. Li’s case to the procuratorate on April 7. Her lawyer, Mr. Cheng Hai, submitted a legal opinion requesting her case be dropped as no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong.
The procuratorate indicted Ms. Li on July 13, and the court tried her on August 1. She was sentenced to 3.5 years and fined 10,000 yuan in September.
Judge Zhang Shouqing at the Dali City Intermediate Court refused to hold an open session to hear Ms. Li’s appeal. Instead he issued a decision to uphold the original verdict and ordered the lower court to carry out the sentence on December 23.
Zhao and other administrators at Dali University have used various excuses to avoid Ms. Li’s parents as they tried to seek resolution for her delayed college graduation.
