(Minghui.org) Eight Falun Gong practitioners in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, were scheduled to stand trial separately on July 25, 2024 for their faith, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. It’s not clear whether the hearings indeed took place as scheduled.
Arrests and Arbitrary Detention
The eight practitioners, including Mr. Sun Hao, Ms. Xu Yueqin, Ms. Li Jun, Ms. Duan Qiongying, Mr. Wang Wentao, Ms. Li Tao, Ms. Luo Yi, and a practitioner whose name was unknown, were arrested on May 24, 2023, by officers from the Wenjiang District Police Department.
The police held the practitioners at the Xinjin Brainwashing Center and only told their families that they were placed on residential surveillance at a designated location for “inciting subversion of state power,” but without revealing the specific detention location. By law, suspects cannot be placed on residential surveillance at a designated location if they have their own residence in the same city where they were arrested, unless they were involved in crimes concerning terrorist attacks or jeopardizing national security. The practitioners’ families suspected that the police accused their loved ones of committing the crime of “subversion” in order to keep them in detention.
Mr. Sun refused to cooperate with the police interrogation in the brainwashing center and was later released on bail. The other seven practitioners were also interrogated. The police deceived some of them into providing information about other arrested practitioners by saying that the latter had already confessed. After obtaining the desired information, the police used that as prosecution evidence to pressure the practitioners into renouncing Falun Gong.
The seven practitioners were transferred to the Pi County Detention Center and Wenjiang Detention Center after their arrests were approved by prosecutor Zheng Bo of the Wenjiang District Procuratorate on June 30, 2023. Their “crime” was also changed to “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used by the communist regime to frame Falun Gong practitioners.
After the practitioners’ detention center transfer, the authorities still barred their families and lawyers from visiting them at the beginning, but relented after the families filed complaints against them. Yet when the practitioners’ families sent law books to the practitioners for them to study the legal knowledge, the guards refused to deliver the books to the practitioners.
Families’ Efforts to Seek Justice for Their Loved Ones Blocked
After the practitioners’ arrests were approved, family members of Ms. Xu and Ms. Li Jun applied to be their non-lawyer defenders, prosecutor Zheng denied their request. They filed complaints against Zheng, but to no avail.
Several family members of other practitioners were also turned away when they applied to review their case documents. In May 2024, one family hired a lawyer for the practitioner, but the prosecutor still denied the lawyer’s request to review the case document and refused to provide updates whether the practitioners had been indicted.
The families later found out that Zheng had already indicted the practitioners on March 1, 2024 with the charge of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization” and moved their case to the Wenjiang District Court.
In mid-May 2024, one practitioner’s family member contacted Hu Weiwei, the presiding judge in charge of their joint-case, yet Hu again denied their his request to review the case document. Hu said that only the practitioners’ lawyers were allowed to review their case documents and indictment. Yet when a lawyer came, Hu only allowed him to look at the documents, but without taking pictures or photocopies. She also forced the lawyer to sign a confidentiality agreement. The lawyer filed a complaint against Hu, and was allowed to make photocopies of the documents, but not take photos.
Shortly after the lawyer reviewed the practitioner’s case documents, judge Hu split their joint-case into individual cases and scheduled eight one-hour hearings for July 25. She barred one practitioner’s husband from attending the hearing, because he went to the police station to pick up her backpack and other personal items, and was listed as a witness as a result. Hu also forbade the daughter of another practitioner from representing her in court as a non-lawyer defender with the excuse that she was pregnant.
It’s not clear whether the hearings indeed took place on July 25.
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