(Minghui.org) After serving a three-year prison sentence, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Zhao Jun appealed to the Liangshan Intermediate Court on May 14, 2014, to have the verdict against her dismissed.
The appeal letter asked the judges from the Xichang City Court and the Liangzhou Intermediate Court to withdraw the verdicts from the first and second trials, and acquit her. However, staff at the Liangshan Intermediate Court refused to accept her paperwork, stating that their superiors had ordered them not to accept appeals from Falun Gong practitioners.
Appeal Denied
Ms. Zhao Jun was arrested on November 30, 2010, for distributing Shen Yun DVDs in Xiaomiao Village, Xichang City, and was secretly tried on April 29, 2011. Her family was not informed of the trial. She was sentenced to a three-year prison term in September 2011.
An appeal was presented to the Liangzhou Intermediate Court, which was denied. Ms. Zhao's parents also appealed to the intermediate court on her behalf on December 21, 2011. The appeal was not accepted because it was on behalf of a Falun Gong practitioner.
Tortured in Prison
Ms. Zhao was taken to Yangmahe Prison, in Jianyang City. She was put in solitary confinement and beaten. She was hung up with her hands cuffed behind her back for half an hour. She was also forced to wear “shrink clothes” made of thick canvas for half an hour. The clothes cause breathing difficulties.
Torture reenactment: Hung up with hands cuffed behind the back
The guards deprived Ms. Zhao of sleep, allowing her to sleep only two hours over three days because she refused to write a guarantee statement, promising to renounce the practice. Inmates were ordered to hit her in the face with a broom. They also kicked her and pinched her throat, and said, “We will pinch you until you die.”
The inmates poured cold water over her on the evening of December 30, 2011, and she almost froze to death due to the extreme cold.
The inmates threatened, “Tomorrow is New Year's Day, and the majority of guards will have the day off. If you still refuse to write a guarantee statement, worse things are waiting for you, and you will see how we will treat you.”
They removed all her clothes. One group of inmates went to sleep and another monitored her. She was forced to stand throughout the night. When she leaned against the wall at 6:00 a.m. on January 1, 2012, one of the inmates shouted, “Zhao Jun is exercising!” They forced her to sign the guarantee statement as she lost consciousness.
Ms. Zhao told the guards the next day that she had signed the guarantee statement against her will. She wrote a solemn declaration while still in the prison, declaring what she wrote to be null and void.
Ms. Zhao was released on November 29, 2013. She appealed to the Liangshan Intermediate Court for the verdict to be rescinded, which was denied.
Ms. Zhao, 58, retired from the Tongde Construction Company and began practicing Falun Gong in 2006.
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