(Minghui.org) Two Tieling City, Liaoning Province residents were recently sentenced to prison for raising awareness about the persecution of their faith. Ms. Qiu Tieling and Ms. Wang Jinhui practice Falun Gong, a traditional mind-body spiritual practice that has been targeted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
The women were arrested on June 4, 2021 for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong. Their two electric motorcycles were impounded and their Falun Gong books, photo of Falun Gong’s founder, and cellphones were confiscated. The police also forcibly took their photos and collected blood samples.
Ms. Qiu was held at the Tieling County Detention Center. Ms. Wang was locked in a metal cage in the basement of the Xincheng District Police Department, after she was found to have a fever. Their arrests were approved on July 3.
Prior to the practitioners’ hearing on October 26, Ms. Wang’s family traveled to the Yinzhou District Court several times and asked to represent her in court. The presiding judge refused to talk to them or answer their calls. When the family talked to the judge’s assistant, he was unable to answer any questions. Only when the family called the judge again on the day before the hearing, did he answer their call. He said that the family had to get a signed letter from Ms. Wang in order to represent her.
The family rushed to the detention center. The guard on duty didn’t immediately allow Ms. Wang to sign the representation letter, but asked for permission from his supervisor first. When the family received the signed letter and went to the court, it was already close to the end of the business day.
The family called the judge and asked what they should do next. The judge responded impatiently, “I can only allow you to attend the hearing, but you can’t defend her.”
At 7 a.m. on October 26, Ms. Qiu’s ailing, wheelchair-bound husband took a taxi with other family members’ help and arrived at the court before 8 a.m. When the court opened at 8:30 a.m., the bailiff refused to allow him to enter. The lawyer pleaded to the bailiff, “When I visited my client, she kept asking about her husband. You should let them see each other in the video call, so she doesn’t have to worry about him.” The court still rejected the request.
Ms. Qiu and Ms. Wang’s lawyers entered a not guilty plea for them. They argued that their clients didn’t harm anyone or anything in society by practicing Falun Gong. While the prosecutor Zhou Hongbo charged them with “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” he couldn’t specify what law’s enforcement was undermined and how. Further, no law has ever criminalized Falun Gong in China. Instead, they said it was the police who violated the law by beating the practitioners during their arrests.
The lawyers went on to say that their clients are just regular Falun Gong practitioners. The books confiscated from them were for their personal use, not to promote Falun Gong. They merely practiced Falun Gong to be good people and to stay fit. Yet they were prosecuted for exercising their basic rights. “They love their families. They are your fellow citizens, not your enemies. Please acquit them,” the lawyers said to the judge.
Ms. Qiu and Ms. Wang also testified in their own defense and recounted how they benefitted from practicing Falun Gong. “Falun Gong teaches people to be a good person by following the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance. Our distributing the materials is only to urge people to be good and to stop following the communist regime in persecuting good people.”
While the prosecutor acknowledged that Article 36 of the Chinese Constitutions states that Chinese citizens have freedom of religion and that no governmental bodies or social groups should interfere with or discriminate against citizens of faith, she repeated a decision from the Ministry of Civil Affairs that labeled the Falun Dafa Research Association as an illegal qigong organization on July 22, 1999, after the Association had long withdrawn from the China Qigong Research Society and been disbanded.
The prosecutor also said that she was receiving too many calls and emails from both abroad and inside China, urging her not to get involved in the persecution. With no evidence whatsoever, she blamed the two practitioners for organizing the calls, which she claimed had affected her daily life and work.
The practitioners’ families learned on December 8 that Ms. Qiu was sentenced to three years with a 2,000-yuan fine and Ms. Wang to eight months with a 2,000-yuan fine. Before her loved ones were informed of her verdict, Ms. Qiu had already appealed on December 7. Both she and Ms. Wang are still held at the Tieling City Detention Center at the time of writing.
Related report:
Two Falun Gong Practitioners Still Detained after Case Against Them Returned to Police
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