(Minghui.org) Two Mengyin County residents were sentenced to prison on charges of “using a cult to undermine law enforcement,” a standard pretext used by the Chinese communist regime in its attempt to frame and imprison Falun Gong practitioners.
Mr. Zhao Chuanwen and Mr. Zhou Guangming were arrested on December 24, 2015 while distributing information about the persecution of Falun Gong in neighboring Linyi City.
The local authorities threatened the two men’s families and supporters for trying to seek their release. Mr. Zhao’s wife, Ms. Liu Fenghou, and Mr. Zhou’s daughter, Ms. Zhou Linging, were arrested shortly before the court date.
The two practitioners’ lawyers entered not-guilty pleas during the trial on August 12, 2016. They argued that the People’s Congress, China’s law-making body, has never enacted any law that criminalizes Falun Gong; therefore, their clients should never have been prosecuted for exercising their constitutional right to freedom of belief and freedom of the press.
The prosecutor claimed that five witnesses saw the two practitioners handing out Falun Gong materials, yet he failed to produce any of the eyewitnesses in court.
The lawyers challenged the prosecutor to read aloud the dozen copies of Falun Gong materials confiscated from the two practitioners. When the prosecutor refused, the lawyers pointed out that the materials contained nothing but facts about the persecution. As such, they caused no harm to anyone, let alone undermine law enforcement.
The prosecutor next brought up the two practitioners’ previous incarceration as evidence against them. Mr. Zhou was once given two years of forced labor, and Mr. Zhao 13 years of imprisonment for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. Their lawyers argued that the prior incarceration was based on the same trumped-up charges the two practitioners were fighting this time, and represented nothing but the Chinese communist regime’s blatant violation of its citizens’ human rights.
The judge announced the guilty verdicts one week later, sentencing Mr. Zhao to 2 years and Mr. Zhou to 1.5 years.
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