(Minghui.org) A 31-year-old resident of Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, made three court appearances between November 2024 and April 2025 for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Li Lixia, a physician who graduated from Hebei Medical School, was arrested on the night of March 25, 2024. Four officers broke into her home and confiscated her Falun Gong books, computer, cell phone, a broken printer, and other items. They took her to the Zhentou Police Station and moved her to the Shijiazhuang City Second Detention Center the next day.
The police targeted Ms. Li after discovering that she had removed information slandering Falun Gong from a bulletin board put up by the Qiaoxi District Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) in March 2024.
Under the directive of the PLAC, an extra-judicial agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong, prosecutor Zhang Shiyao from the Qiaoxi District Procuratorate indicted Ms. Li. Exactly when is unknown. Her two lawyers asked to meet with Zhang numerous times, but he used various excuses to avoid them. When the lawyers finally got hold of him, he said that he had forwarded the case to the Qiaoxi District Court. That meant the lawyers were never given a chance to verify the prosecution evidence and present their legal opinion to the procuratorate.
Prior to the first hearing on November 20, 2024, Ms. Li’s lawyers discovered that ten of the CDs alleged to have been seized from their client’s home could not be played, so there was no way to see what was on them. Prosecutor Zhang still included them as part of the prosecution evidence.
During the hearing, the lawyers entered a not-guilty plea on behalf of Ms. Li. They emphasized that no enacted law in China deems Falun Gong a crime and that the Falun Gong materials confiscated from their client’s home were her lawful assets.
The lawyers also testified against prosecutor Zhang for fabricating evidence, pointing out that he recorded every two-fold flyer confiscated from Ms. Li’s home as two flyers so that he could report the minimum amount of evidence required to file charges against a suspect.
After the hearing, Ms. Li filed a complaint against Zhang with different agencies at the municipal, provincial, and central levels of government. Her family also asked to have her case dropped but never heard back from the court.
In March 2025, presiding judge Qi Jingjing notified Ms. Li’s lawyers that she’d received a notice from the Shijiazhuang City Police Department’s Domestic Security Division verifying evidence. The notice was signed by Du Jingbo and Zhang Kangping, who alleged that all the items confiscated from Ms. Li’s home were cult propaganda. The evidence listed in the notice, however, differed from what was stated in the indictment.
The second hearing was held on April 1, 2025. Judge Qi never notified Ms. Li of the evidence verification notice prior to that as required by law.
During the hearing, the lawyers noticed the prosecutor was wearing a mask. They asked him which category of evidence the verification notice covered. By law, only eight categories of evidence are admissible. The prosecutor didn’t know how to answer that and stepped outside to make a phone call. He then returned to say it was in the “documentary” category. Only then did the lawyers realize the prosecutor was not Zhang. By law, lawyers should be notified of any prosecutor change beforehand. They protested the violation of legal procedure and judge Qi adjourned the session.
Prosecutor Zhang appeared at the third hearing on April 24, 2025, and re-categorized the evidence verification notice from “documentary” to “expert testimony.”
The lawyers asked the two people who’d signed the evidence verification notice to appear in court to accept cross-examination. By law, only an independent, third-party agency is authorized to verify prosecution evidence. In this case, the two verifiers worked for the Qiaoxi District Police Department, which supervised the police station that arrested Ms. Li. The lawyers said it was a conflict of interest, but judge Qi ignored the lawyers’ complaint.
At the beginning of 2021, when Shijiazhuang was hit with another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Li volunteered to work and live in quarantine zones to take better care of the patients. Her selfless act won her high praise, yet she is now being tried for her faith in Falun Gong.