(Minghui.org) After over 18 months of detention, a man in Xianning City, Hubei Province, was sentenced to three years for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Zhang Jian, a 72-year-old retired chemistry teacher at Yongan Middle School, was talking to people about Falun Gong after 9 a.m. on September 22, 2023, when three men and a woman surrounded him. The four plainclothes officers beat him and took him to a local lockup. His home was also raided. About a month later, he was transferred to a detention center, where he was detained for 18 months before being sentenced to prison. It’s not clear if he has yet been admitted to prison. Details about his indictment, trial, and sentencing aren’t known either.
This is not the first time that Mr. Zhang has been targeted for his faith, which he took up in June 1996. He was previously detained seven times and his wife divorced him in 2004, fearing that their daughter would be implicated because he practiced Falun Gong. The couple later remarried.
During Mr. Zhang’s seventh arrest on September 21, 2022, the police seized his daughter, when she tried to stop them from taking him away. Her mother warned the officers, “My daughter is still nursing her baby. I will fight you if anything happens to her!” The police let Mr. Zhang’s daughter go but put a black hood over her father’s head. They took him to the Tongshan County Detention Center and did not release him until September 28, 2022.
Related Report:
Retired Chemistry Teacher Arrested an 8th Time for His Faith, Still Detained 13 Months Later
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