(Minghui.org) Two women in Heilongjiang Province were sentenced in August 2022 for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been targeted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Zuo Chenghua and Ms. Tu Xiuxia were arrested on August 8, 2021 when they went to the Shengli Farm to distribute Falun Gong materials. The police ransacked their homes between that evening and the next morning. Their Falun Gong books and cellphones were confiscated.
Both women were first given 15 days at the Tongjiang City Lockup and then transferred to the Jiamusi City Detention Center on August 24. Their arrests were approved on September 3.
Their lawyers entered not guilty pleas for them during the two hearings by the Jiansanjiang Court in May and July 2022. The judge sentenced Ms. Zuo to three years and four months and Ms. Tu to three years in August. Both of them have appealed the verdicts.
Ms. Zuo, 61, lives in the Qixing Farm. She took up Falun Gong in 1998 and credits the practice for curing her severe heart condition. Prior to her latest arrest and sentencing, the local authorities harassed her many times in 2020 and ordered her to write a statement renouncing Falun Gong. When she refused to comply, they harassed her husband and other family members, threatening that their children wouldn’t be admitted to college or find a job if she didn’t renounce Falun Gong.
Ms. Tu also took up Falun Gong in 1998. Shortly after the onset of the persecution in 1999, she went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong and was arrested. She wrote letters to the police to clarify the facts about Falun Gong after being taken back to Heilongjiang. Because of the letters, she was arrested and given two years of forced labor.
Yang Jianhua (杨建华), president of Jiansanjiang Procuratorate: +86-13684565999Bi Honghai (毕洪海), head of Jiansanjiang Domestic Security Office: +86-13359790700, +86-13846482667Ding Lichang (丁立昌), judge of Jiansanjiang Court: +86-15945872789
(More perpetrators’ contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)