Liaoning Man Sentenced to Four Years for Publishing Articles on Overseas Falun Gong Websites

(Minghui.org) A Huludao City, Liaoning Province resident was recently sentenced to four years with a 20,000-yuan fine for publishing over 200 articles about the Falun Gong spiritual cultivation on overseas websites.

Arrest and Sentencing

On January 21, 2022, nine days before the 2022 Chinese New Year, Mr. Gong Yubo, 45, returned home from working out of town to spend the holiday with his family. Wang Shufeng, the village secretary, Tian Changwu, the deputy chief of the Shaheying Village Police Station, another police officer, as well as a person who claimed to be from the pandemic prevention center, descended on his home.

Tian and his fellow officer were not in uniform. The license plate of their car was covered by a surgical mask. Without showing a search warrant, they arrested Mr. Gong and confiscated his Falun Gong books, computer and cell phone. His wife repeatedly asked what they wanted by raiding her home, but no one answered.

Mr. Gong’s wife said his arrest left their family in a dire situation. With him being the sole breadwinner, she struggled to provide for their college-age daughter and one-year-old son. Her bedridden father, who lives with them, also relied on her for care.

For the next five months, Mr. Gong's wife went to various local police departments, procuratorates and courts, to inquire about her husband’s case, but to no avail. The authorities claimed that Mr. Gong’s case was related to “state secrets” and refused to provide any information about his situation. 

It was not until June 16 that Mr. Gong’s wife found out through the Huludao City Appeals Office that he had been put under house arrest and that the Shenyang City Public Security Bureau and Xinmin City Police Department were in charge of his case.

Mr. Gong’s wife went to the Xinmin Police Department on June 20 to submit documents seeking his release. The officers refused to meet with her or accept the materials. They claimed that his case was related to state secrets and they couldn’t reveal anything to her.

She next went to the local police department’s appeals office, the Xinmin City Appeals Office, the Xinmin Disciplinary Inspection Commission and the Xinmin City Political and Legal Affairs Committee, to submit the materials, but was refused by all agencies, on grounds that the case wasn’t under their jurisdiction.

Mr. Gong’s wife lastly went to the Xinmin City Procuratorate and was received by prosecutor Liu Tiebing. Liu was very rude to her. He told her that Mr. Gong was held at a hotel, but he couldn’t let her see him or reveal the address to her. Liu also refused to let her review his case documents or be his family defender. 

As of now, Mr. Gong’s wife still doesn’t know the names of the officers in charge of his case. The police never answered her calls and they always used Mr. Gong’s phone to call her. 

On July 20, 2022, Mr. Gong was transferred from the secret hotel to the Xinmin City Detention Center on criminal detention. His arrest was approved on August 10.

Mr. Gong’s wife later hired a lawyer for him. After several rounds of communication with the police and the detention center, the lawyer receive approval to visit Mr. Gong on August 1, 2022. But when he went to the detention center at the specified time, the guards denied the visitation, claiming that the police were talking to Mr. Gong. 

Under the lawyer’s strong protest, the guards agreed for him to visit Mr. Gong on the condition that he stay in Xinmin City for seven days for COVID-19 quarantine.

The lawyer and Mr. Gong’s wife made three trips to Xinmin, but the authorities always found excuses to deny their visits.

The Liaozhong District Procuratorate indicted Mr. Gong on December 6, 2022. The prosecutor accused him of publishing 208 articles on the PureInsight website (a site for Falun Gong practitioners to share their cultivation experiences) and 3 articles on the Minghui website, between 2002 and 2022, with various pen names including “Xiao Lian,” “Shi Fangxing,” “Lan Xin” and “Yu Bo.” He was charged with “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong.

On May 18, 2023, the Liaozhong District Court announced that Mr. Gong had been sentenced to four years with a 20,000-yuan fine.

Wife’s Plight

Mr. Gong’s father-in-law is 71 this year. He suffered a stroke in 2019 and Mr. Gong borrowed money from his manager at work to pay for his surgery. Although his father-in-law survived, he became incapacitated. Mr. Gong’s wife and mother-in-law have to care for his father-in-law around the clock, including feeding him, turning his body, and taking him out for a walk.

During the 2023 Chinese New Year, Mr. Gong’s wife said that while all other families were celebrating the holiday together, she and her family were in no mood for the new year, after having spent a year living in fear and worrying about her husband. “I don’t know if my husband is safe, whether he has enough clothes to keep him warm and whether he is being tortured," she said. "I don’t know how long we will have to suffer like this.”

“When my husband was arrested, our toddler son was still little. Now he has learned to say ‘daddy.’ But his daddy isn’t there to be with him, which pains me when I look at my baby’s sweet, innocent face.

“We still have dozens of thousands of yuan of debt to pay. We depended on my husband to provide for us. With my father and young child to take care of, I’m not sure how I can manage to make ends meet without him.”

Previous Persecution

Mr. Gong took up Falun Gong in 1996. Prior to his latest sentencing, he was arrested three times in 2000 alone, on February 20, April 24 and October 28, and detained 15 days each time. He was arrested again on January 29, 2010 and given one year of forced labor on February 25, 2010.

Perpetrators’ contact information:

Duan Xiaoguang (段晓光), presiding judge, Liaozhong District Court: [phone]Tao Sha (陶沙), judge, Liaozhong CourtZhang Wenfei (张文飞), judge, Liaozhong CourtLi Chaoyang (李朝阳), prosecutor, Liaochong District Procuratorate: [phone]

(More perpetrators’ contact information is available in the original Chinese article.)

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Communist Regime Prosecutor: “A Falun Gong Case Is More Severe Than Murder or Arson”

Sole Breadwinner Arrested for His Faith, Detained Incommunicado for Two Months and Counting