(Minghui.org) After nearly two years of detention, a Beijing resident was recently sentenced to two years and fined 5,000 yuan for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Shi Yingji, 45, was arrested on February 28, 2019 and has been held at the Dawa Detention Center since.
The Beijing City Procuratorate approved his arrest on April 4, 2019 and transferred his case to the Daxing District Procuratorate. He was indicted in January 2020 and stood trial on November 5 at the Daxing District Court.
The court informed Mr. Shi's family of his verdict in late December. He is scheduled to be released on February 27, 2021.
Past Persecution
Mr. Shi used to work for the local railroad system. After the persecution started in 1999, his wife left him and he has been repeatedly arrested and detained for his faith.
Mr. Shi was arrested on June 28, 2006. He was tortured in the Yanqing Detention Center and was in critical condition after having a heart attack. The police continued to monitor him while he was treated in the hospital.
His arrest was approved on September 19, 2006 and he was transferred to the Beijing City Detention Center, before being sentenced to six years in Qianjin Prison by the Yanqing County Court.
Mr. Shi was arrested again on on July 18, 2013, only a year after he was released. He was held for an unknown amount of time at the Changping Detention Center.
His next arrest was on April 14, 2015. After two weeks of detention at the Haidian Detention Center, on April 30, he was transferred to the Changping Brainwashing Center and held there for 42 days. Not long after, he was arrested again on July 20 and held at the Yanqing County Detention Center for a week.
Mr. Shi was arrested one more time on March 7, 2017 and held in a brainwashing center for three days.
During a business trip to Qingdao City, Shandong Province, he was arrested on May 29, 2018 prior to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, as authorities in Qingdao and its neighboring cities launched large-scale arrests of local Falun Gong practitioners in attempts to prevent them from going to the public to expose the persecution of their faith.
