(Minghui.org) A resident of Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province, had his bail lifted on May 10, 2024, after he filed an administrative litigation against a local police department for arresting him without any legal basis.
Mr. Li Jinghui was arrested on May 8, 2023 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. He went on a hunger strike and was released on bail on May 19, 2023. He filed complaints against the arresting officers in August 2023 and requested the information about his perpetrators be disclosed. After his complaints and requests were ignored, he filed an administrative litigation against the police agency responsible for his arrest.
While the litigation case is still pending, the arresting police agency lifted Mr. Li’s bail on May 10, 2024. By law, however, the police still have one year to seek further prosecution of Mr. Li. If they take no action within the next 12 months, they must drop the case against him.
This is not the first time that Mr. Li has been targeted for his faith. He was previously given one year of forced labor in May 2000 and released on parole two months later after he went on a hunger strike. After another arrest in May 2001, he was sentenced to six years in prison and brutally tortured. He was arrested in April 2009 and sentenced to four years in prison.
Latest Arrest
About eight officers from the Duanzhou District Police Department and its subordinate Hemugang Town Police Station broke into Mr. Li’s rental place around 3 p.m. on May 8, 2023. They produced a search warrant that stated that Mr. Li was suspected of using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement, a standard pretext used by the communist regime to frame Falun Gong practitioners. The warrant did not have anyone’s signature as required by law.
The police confiscated Mr. Li’s computer, laminator, three cell phones, two copies of a recent article written by the founder of Falun Gong, and several amulets which had Falun Gong messages.
During the interrogation at the police station, Mr. Li learned that the police targeted him after discovering that he published a solemn statement on Minghui.org to nullify what he wrote against his will to renounce Falun Gong during a previous arrest. In the statement, he also alluded to what he did with two other local Falun Gong practitioners to raise awareness of the persecution. The police were hoping to find out more about Mr. Li’s Falun Gong-related activities with the latest arrest.
Mr. Li refused to reveal his activities as it is legal to practice Falun Gong and share it with the public, however he saw fit. He also refused to cooperate when he was ordered to sign the interrogation records.
The police took him to a hospital for a physical examination the next day. The doctors collected his blood sample and did an ultrasound and a CT scan. He was taken to the Duanzhou District Detention Center that night.
Hunger Strike
Mr. Li started a hunger strike on May 11, 2023. A few days later, the police delivered two notices to him: One, “the police recommendation to indict [him]” and the second, a “30-day detention notice.” As he continued his hunger strike, the arresting officers, the detention center director, and the prosecutor-in-residence at the detention center all had talks with him trying to persuade him to end it.
The guards force-fed him glucose twice but he threw up immediately. On May 17, 2023, the seventh day of his hunger strike, the detention center issued a bail release notice and carried him outside in a chair. They forced him to fingerprint the notice and told his coworkers to pick him up (his family all lives in the countryside in Jiangmen City in the same province, about 100 miles away from Zhaoqing City).
Before his coworkers arrived, the detention center doctor noticed that Mr. Li was slipping into a coma. The doctor called the arresting officers and they took him to a hospital.
The hospital doctors put Mr. Li on IV drips. After he regained consciousness, he pulled out the needles and demanded the items confiscated during the home raid be returned. The police got his family on a virtual meeting to try to persuade him to eat. They also set up a camcorder to record his every move. They claimed that he could leave.
During his hospital stay, the police called in his coworkers to try to talk him out of his hunger strike. He told them not to worry about him and also told them how he was forced to give blood samples multiples time since his arrest. He told them about the state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners. With a rare blood type, he said he suspected that his biomedical info might have been entered into the communist regime’s database used for organ matching.
Mr. Li continued his hunger strike in the hospital. The police removed the camcorder and claimed that they stopped patrolling his ward in an attempt to make him eat again. He was not moved and the police had the doctors threaten to send him to a psychiatric hospital for force-feeding.
The police then brought all the confiscated items to his hospital room and asked his coworkers to pick him up. Mr. Li insisted that his bail condition be lifted first. While the police did not approve of this request, they approached one of his relatives who lives in Zhaoqing City and asked the relative to “work” on him. Mr. Li told the relative that the only way for him to stop hunger strike would be for the police to drive him and his confiscated items to his rental place but without going inside.
The police agreed and Mr. Li started eating again. Hours later, they drove him back as he requested. His landlord, however, felt tremendous pressure and urged him to move out. He did and moved back in with his parents in the countryside in Jiangmen City.
Request for Open Information Disclosure and Administrative Litigation
On August 5, 2023, Mr. Li filed complaints against the Duanzhou District Police Department with various agencies at the central government, the provincial, and the municipal-level. He accused the police of arresting and detaining him without any legal basis.
That day Mr. Li also filed a request with the Duanzhou District Police Department to lift his bail and dismiss his case. The request further asked that the information of all the officers involved in his case be disclosed, including their names, ages, police badge numbers, titles, responsibilities, divisions, and IDs.
The Duanzhou District Police Department denied Mr. Li’s open information disclosure request and he filed an administrative review application. When that did not yield any result, he proceeded to file an administrative litigation against the police department with the Zhaoqing City Intermediate Court.
Summoned on February 1, 2024
Officer Chen Guofang of the Hemugang Police Station, which arrested Mr. Li together with the Duanzhou District Police Department, summoned him on February 1, 2024.
Mr. Li went to the police station and learned that Chen wanted to find out more about his litigation lawsuit against the police department. While they were talking, another officer started photographing him. He tried to stop the officer but the latter still took his picture. A few minutes later, he was told to leave as the police “were going to have a meeting.”
Bail Lifted on May 10, 2024
Officer Zhang from the Duanzhou District Police Department called Mr. Li on May 9, 2024 and notified him to report to the Kangke Police Station the following afternoon to process paperwork to lift his bail and return the 1,000 yuan bail bond.
Mr. Li went to the police station the next morning to deliver copies of all the legal documents he used in his case, including his request to lift his bail and dismiss his case, request an open information disclosure, administrative litigation against the police department, and complaints against the police department. He asked the front desk officer to pass these documents to the police chief. He hoped the chief would read the documents before the meeting that afternoon.
Mr. Li returned to the police station in the afternoon. He took back the legal documents he left there in the morning. Deputy chief Lin Qiang, two officers (surnamed Liang and Zhang) from the Duanzhou District Police Department, and a young unidentified man, received Mr. Li.
Mr. Li recognized Liang as one of the arresting officers. Neither Liang nor other officers showed their IDs during the arrest. Liang claimed that Mr. Li would not remember their names even if they produced their IDs.
Chief Lin accused Mr. Li of disclosing state secrets in his complaints and litigation materials. Mr. Li showed him “Notice [2000] 39” jointly issued by the General Office of the Central Committee, the General Office of the State Council, and the Ministry of Public Security. The notice listed organizations deemed cults, but Falun Gong was not on the list. Mr. Li said the notice was public information, not a state secret. He added that every piece of law and regulation he cited in his legal documents was public information. Lin then ordered him to sign the copy of the notice but Mr. Li refused.
Lin next accused Mr. Li of breaking the law by exposing the persecution of him on Minghui.org. Mr. Li reminded Lin that law enforcement must have probable cause to arrest and detain suspects and that the officers who arrested him did not have any legal basis as no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong.
Lin began to verbally attack Falun Gong and Mr. Li urged him to not fall victim to the communist regime’s hate propaganda.
Officer Zhang then produced the paperwork to lift Mr. Li’s bail and ordered him to sign. He refused because he said he should never have been arrested and put on bail in the first place.
Zhang next presented police interrogation records for Mr. Li to sign. He was shocked to read that he was “interrogated” four times since his arrest, in August 2023, November 2023, February 2024, and May 13, 2024.
Mr. Li said today was May 10, 2024. How could there already be a record of an interrogation held three days in the future? Moreover, he was not interrogated in August and November 2023. He was indeed summoned on February 1, 2024 but was never shown any interrogation record. Zhang claimed that they knew he lived in the countryside so they didn’t bother to summon him for interrogation in August and November 2023. As for the May 13 interrogation record, they would be fine if Mr. Li just changed the date to May 10 and fingerprinted it.
Mr. Li couldn’t believe the police were so blatant in fabricating interrogation records. He refused to sign any of the documents but did write a note saying, “the law enforcement is breaking the law while enforcing the law. They fabricated these interrogation records. I was never interrogated on the said days.”
Mr. Li further condemned the police for not notifying his family of his detention as required by law. After he was issued a 30-day detention, he told the Hemugang Police Station his parents’ home address. By law, the police should mail the detention notice to families within 24 hours of issuing the notice. Mr. Li’s loved ones never received the notice.
Zhang claimed that the detention notice was mailed to the address on his ID, which is different from his parents’ home address.
Zhang then told Mr. Li to sign paperwork to get the 1,000-yuan bail bond back. He said that none of his family members ever paid the bail on his behalf. The reason was that the police deceived his father into signing the bail release form by saying that they had video proof of Mr. Li distributing Falun Gong flyers (which he never did). By law, suspects only need to either list a guarantor or pay a bail bond. Since Mr. Li’s father was listed as a guarantor, he did not have to post a bond.
Instead of applauding Mr. Li for being honest about having never paid the bail bond in the first place, chief Lin began to verbally abuse Falun Gong and its founder again.
Mr. Li ignored him and left with the notice to lift his bail and copies of the fabricated interrogation records. He intends to use those documents as evidence against the police.
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