Man in His 80s Demands Prosecutor Drop Daughter’s Case for Upholding Her Faith
(Minghui.org) A man in his 80s in Jilin City, Jilin Province, is working hard to seek justice for his daughter, who has been detained for three months for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
The authorities in Jilin City are blocking all local Falun Gong practitioners arrested for their faith from hiring out-of-town lawyers, citing an order from above. The local lawyers that the authorities allow the practitioners to hire can only enter a guilty plea for the practitioners, according to the same order.
With no access to any legal channels to seek justice, many practitioners’ families are kept in the dark of their situation once they are arrested. Some families only learned the prison sentences of their loved ones a long time after they had been imprisoned.
To rescue his daughter, Ms. Jin Min’s octogenarian father decided to represent her himself. In his legal opinion recently submitted to the local procuratorate, he demanded that the prosecutor provide updates about her case and drop the charges against her. He said she didn’t do anything wrong in following Falun Gong’s principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance” and being a good person. As her father, he said he has the responsibility to defend her.
Ms. Jin Min
Ms. Jin, 53, was arrested on September 11, 2020, after she was reported for talking to a taxi driver about Falun Gong. She was taken to the Jilin City Detention Center on September 14, and her arrest was approved on October 23.
On November 8, 2020, Ms. Jin’s father and older sister went to the Yongji County Police Department to inquire about her case. He complained that two months after her arrest, his family was still not allowed to visit her and hadn’t received any notices about her case. The officer who received them denied having any knowledge about Ms. Jin’s arrest and directed them to the Yongji County Police Department.
In the next few weeks, Ms. Jin’s father frequented the police department, only to be given run-arounds.
When he went to the police department again on November 19, he insisted that the officer who arrested his daughter provide updates about her, fearing that she might be “disappeared.” After the officer asked for instruction from his supervisor, he told Ms. Jin’s father that her case had been sent to the Chuanying District Procuratorate.
The elderly man next went to the procuratorate and talked to prosecutor Ren. He said that his daughter didn’t violate any laws in practicing her faith and urged Ren to drop her case. Ren refused to do so and then left.