(Minghui.org) After an intermediate court upheld Ms. Wang Lei's eight-year prison sentence for her spiritual belief in Falun Gong, the communist authorities prevented her lawyer from visiting her.
When the lawyer went to visit Ms. Wang at a detention facility in Beijing on June 30, 2016, after filing another appeal against the intermediate court for upholding the sentence, his request to see her was turned down by the guards, who claimed that the lawyer could meet with Ms. Wang only after she was taken to prison.
The guards also asked for a long list of legal documents before approving his visit, including a visitation approval letter from the Beijing Prison Management Office, a receipt of the complaint he filed through the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice, Ms. Wang’s appeal, and the lawyer’s representation documents.
According to Ms. Wang’s family, her appeal had been seized by the detention facility long before. When the lawyer went to the Beijing Prison Management office to request a visitation letter, he was given the runaround.
“It's very obvious that they are trying to cover up what amounts to a trumped-up case,” said Ms. Wang's lawyer.
“My client was sentenced on the charge of 'undermining law enforcement.' But there has never been any law that says practicing Falun Gong is illegal. She was exercising her constitutional rights to freedom of belief and speech. There is no evidence that she caused any damage to the society or law enforcement just by practicing Falun Gong. And, yet, she was given such a heavy sentence of 8 years.”
He criticized the judges for rubber-stamping Mr. Wang's sentence and assisting in the persecution of Falun Gong.
Ms. Wang Lei was arrested with a dozen other practitioners on February 26, 2014. The police did not inform her family of her arrest, nor did they allow them to visit after they learned she had been arrested.
After she was detained for over a year, Beijing Fangshan District Court sentenced her to eight years on November 24, 2015. Her family was not informed.
After her appeal, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court upheld her sentence on February 24, 2016.
Ms. Wang was transferred to the detention center in Daxing District in March 2016 and subjected to intensive brainwashing. The guards beat her to try to force her to renounce Falun Gong.
After the persecution began in 1999, Ms. Wang was repeatedly arrested and sent to forced labor camps four times, where she was shocked with electric batons, beaten, force-fed, and deprived of sleep. She suffered several episodes of psychosis as a result of the torture.
Related report:Woman Suffers Relapse of Torture-induced Psychosis, Still Tried and Sentenced to 8 Years
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