(Minghui.org) Ms. Du Yanhong who lives in the Ninghe District, Tianjin was sentenced to one and a half years for practicing her faith, Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.

Ms. Du Yanhong was arrested on January 8, 2022, when she visited another Falun Gong practitioner. It’s not clear whether the police were targeting that practitioner and arrested Ms. Du when they realized she was also a practitioner, or whether the police were monitoring Ms. Du and followed her to that practitioner’s home.

The police searched Ms. Du’s purse and confiscated her memory cards, self-adhesive stickers and banknotes printed with Falun Gong messages (a way practitioners in China use to raise awareness of the persecution). They proceeded to raid her home. She was later released on bail and fined 5,000 yuan.

The Ninghe District Procuratorate mailed Ms. Du a notice in April 2022 and said that the police submitted her case to them. She couldn’t fall asleep worrying how her bedridden mother (who lives with her family), school-age daughter, and toddler son would cope if she was indicted and sentenced to prison. Her husband ended up having to check her into a rehabilitation hospital when he noticed she was on the verge of having a mental breakdown due to stress.

When Ms. Du got better she was discharged from the hospital. The Ninghe District Court heard her case in May 2023. Judge Zhong Bin presided over the trial. Judges Wei Xiaofei and Dai Shiqiang, and court clerk Cai Xiaotong were present.

Ms. Du testified in her own defense and emphasized that no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong. She urged the judges to uphold justice for law-abiding Falun Gong practitioners like her. She was allowed to go home after the hearing.

Officer Meng Weize from the Lutai Town Police Station came to Ms. Du’s home days later and asked her to go to their police station to “finish up some business.” He promised to let her go home as soon as they were done. Ms. Du went, only to be arrested and taken to a local detention center.

Ms. Du’s husband received her verdict in the mail at the end of September 2023. Only then did he learn that she had been sentenced to one and a half years and sent to the Tianjin Women’s Prison. He didn’t know when her sentencing hearing (if any) was held or when she was transferred from the detention center to the prison.