(Minghui.org) Ms. Bai Xingwen, 71, from Dongying City, Shandong Province was incarcerated in the Shandong Province First Women’s Prison (located in the capital city of Jinan) on July 17, 2023 to serve 3.5 years for her faith, Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Bai Xingwen was sentenced to prison on November 8, 2022, one month after her oldest daughter, Ms. Ji Yingwei, died at 45 as a result of the persecution of their shared faith, Falun Gong.
Ms. Bai said she planned to appeal the wrongful conviction, and it is unclear whether she ever filed an appeal or if her appeal was rejected before she was transferred to prison.
Arrest and Sentencing
Ms. Bai and two of her three daughters, Ms. Ji Yingmei and Ms. Ji Yingping, were arrested on July 15, 2021, after the police suspected that Ms. Bai put up a Falun Gong banner two months earlier, on May 8.
The three women were interrogated at the police station and had their blood, hair, fingerprints, and urine samples collected. The police also recorded their voices and photographed them. All three were released on bail soon after their arrests.
The police took Ms. Bai back into custody on September 16. When her three daughters went to the Chaoyang Police Station to demand her release, the police re-arrested the oldest daughter, Ms. Ji Yingmei.
After Ms. Bai and Ms. Ji were released, they submitted a request to the Procuratorate on October 19, requesting to have their cases dismissed. They also filed a complaint against the police for violating the law in handling their cases.
In retaliation, the police arrested Ms. Bai on November 6, 2021, and gave her 13 days of administrative detention. Due to her high blood pressure, she was denied admission by the local detention center and was released.
Ms. Bai filed another complaint against the police on January 17, 2022. The Dongying District Court informed her on February 24 that they accepted her case and scheduled a hearing for March 23. They called her again on March 14 and said that her case had been rejected.
The police submitted Ms. Bai’s case around March 22 to the Dongying District Procuratorate. On April 1 and 22, she and her lawyer submitted multiple requests to the procuratorate urging the agency not to indict her. The procuratorate ignored their requests and filed charges against her.
The Dongying District Court scheduled a hearing for July 29. One week before the hearing, judge Ji Penghui and clerk Shi Yuanyuan rejected Ms. Bai’s family defender’s request to represent her in court as a non-lawyer (a practice permitted in China). On July 24, Ms. Bai submitted a request to have judge Ji recused from the case.
Ji, however, still presided over the hearing on July 29 and did not allow Ms. Bai to testify in her own defense. In late August 2022, Ms. Bai was notified that the police submitted an opinion saying that the evidence they gathered against her was valid and sufficient to prove her guilt. The court asked her and her lawyer to cross examine the police opinion.
Days later, Ms. Bai’s lawyer submitted his opinion to the court. He stated that the police were not in a position to authenticate their own evidence against Ms. Bai. By law, only an independent, third-party forensic agency is qualified to verify and authenticate the prosecution evidence. The lawyer requested that the police opinion be deemed inadmissible in the case against his client.
While the prosecution process was unfolding, Ms. Bai was taken back into custody and was sent to the Binhai City Detention Center on September 19. Judge Ji ignored her lawyer’s request to throw out the police opinion and sentenced her to 3.5 years with a 20,000-yuan fine on November 8, 2022.
One month before Ms. Bai’s sentencing, her oldest daughter Ms. Ji Yingmei, who had just recovered from late-stage cervical cancer in 2019, succumbed to mental distress from the repeated arrests and harassment in the past two years and passed away on October 9, 2022. She was only 45 years old and is survived by her husband and their young child.
Related Reports:
One Month After Daughter's Persecution Death, Mother Sentenced to 3.5 Years for Their Shared Faith
45-year-old Woman Dies After Cancer Recurrence Due to Relentless Persecution for Her Faith
Mother and Daughter Detained for Three Weeks and Counting for Their Faith
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