(Minghui.org) Two Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province residents were sentenced to prison for their faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Liu Mingping and Ms. Ying Guofang were targeted in a police sweep of more than 20 local practitioners on April 18, 2019. They were detained at Ningbo City Detention Center and later indicted by prosecutor Wu Yihua of the Zhenhai Procuratorate.
The Zhenhai District Court held a hearing of Ms. Liu’s case on December 11, 2019. The court gallery was mostly occupied by staff members of the Domestic Security Office and Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-judiciary agency tasked with persecuting Falun Gong. Ms. Liu’s lawyer entered a not-guilty plea for her.
After the judge sentenced Ms. Liu to 3.5 years, the detention center didn’t transfer her to Zhejiang Women’s Prison until July 28, 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Chinese law requires prisons to inform detainees’ families within five days of their imprisonment, but Ms. Liu’s family didn’t receive any information from the prison.
Ms. Ying was tried on July 3, 2020, and later sentenced to three years. She is still held at the detention center at the time of writing. She has suffered a persistent medical condition since her arrest, but the authorities refused to release her on bail to seek medical treatment.
Another two practitioners who were arrested in April 2019, Ms. Qin Lianyu and Ms. Chen Yubo, have also been indicted by the same prosecutor. Their current case status remains to be investigated.
