Two Shandong Women Lose Appeals Against Wrongful Convictions for Their Faith

(Minghui.org) Two Dongying City, Shandong Province residents lost their appeals against wrongful prison sentences in late May 2023.

Ms. Guo Hongyan, a 46-year-old employee of Shengli Oilfield, and Ms. Chen Xiaohong, a retired middle school Chinese teacher, were both arrested on April 23, 2021 for their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

The Dongying District Court held a hearing of their case through a video call on January 14, 2023, without telling them that they had the option to request an in-person hearing. Both were sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and fined 20,000 yuan in the same month.

Ms. Guo and Ms. Chen appealed to the Dongying City Intermediate Court, which ruled to uphold their original verdicts without holding a hearing.

When Ms. Guo’s mother, in her 70s, went to the court in late May 2023 to inquire about her appeals case, she was only told about the outcome without being given a copy of the ruling. The elderly woman worried about her daughter so much that her heart disease worsened and she fell into a coma multiple times after Ms. Guo’s arrest.

Ms. Chen, on the other hand, had to miss her daughter’s wedding.

Group Arrest and Sentencing

Ms. Guo and Ms. Chen were among the more than twenty practitioners arrested on April 23, 2021. The operation stemmed from a case filed by the Binhai Police Department against the practitioners on April 6, 2019, upon discovering that they had mailed out letters to the public exposing the persecution of Falun Gong. The police monitored the practitioners and tapped their phones for two years before making the arrests.

In addition to Ms. Guo and Ms. Chen, at least eight others (seven practitioners and one family member) arrested on the same day had also been sentenced to prison, including:

Mr. Zhou Deyong, a senior geological engineer and father of a U.S. resident, was sentenced to 8 years with a 100,000-yuan fine.

Ms. Liu Yanmei, 74, was sentenced to 7 years with a 50,000-yuan fine.

Ms. Meng Yu was sentenced to 3.5 years with a 30,000-yuan fine.

Ms. Meng Fanyun and Ms. He Baiqing were both given 2.5 years. (Mr. Han Dan, Ms. Meng’s husband who doesn’t practice Falun Gong, was sentenced to 20 months with a 10,000-yuan fine.)

Mr. Li Xuerong was sentenced to 2 years with a 20,000-yuan fine.

Ms. Guo Yunfang, Mr. Li’s wife, was given 1.5 years with 2 years probation and a 10,000-yuan fine.

Defense Arguments

All the practitioners were sentenced for violating Article 300 of the Criminal Law, which states that anyone using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Their lawyers argued that China’s law-making body, People’s Congress, has never enacted any law criminalizing Falun Gong or labeling it as a cult. As such, there was no legal ground for the sentencing.

The prosecutors in charge of the practitioners’ cases also cited as legal basis a statutory interpretation of Article 300 of the Criminal Law issued by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in November 1999. The interpretation required that anyone practicing or promoting Falun Gong be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. The defense lawyers pointed out that a new statutory interpretation that replaced the 1999 version took effect on February 1, 2017. The new interpretation made no mention of Falun Gong and emphasized that any indictment against anyone engaging in a cult must be based on solid legal grounds. Since no enacted law in China labels Falun Gong as a cult, the sentencing of the practitioners based on the statutory interpretation lacked legal basis.

The defense lawyers also pointed out that the Administration of Press and Publication issued a repeal of the ban on Falun Gong books and informational materials in 2011, and that it was fully legal for their clients to own Falun Gong books and/or distribute information about Falun Gong. As such, the letters mailed out by the practitioners should never have been used as admissible evidence to sentence them.

The lawyers also emphasized that the practitioners had caused no harm to any individuals or society at large, much less undermined law enforcement.

Ms. Guo and Ms. Chen’s lawyers reiterated above arguments in their appeals cases, but the Dongying City Intermediate Court refused to hold a hearing to hear those arguments.

Related Reports:

Targeted in a Police Sweep, Two Shandong Women Sentenced to Prison for Practicing Falun Gong

Senior Geological Engineer and Father of U.S. Resident Sentenced to Eight Years and Fined 100K Yuan

Shandong Province: Overview of Falun Gong Persecution Cases Reported in 2021