(Minghui.org) Two Tengzhou City residents were sentenced to prison for suing former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin for ordering the persecution of Falun Gong that resulted in their past detention.
Soon after Ms. Zhang Jinling mailed her criminal complaints against Jiang in late 2015, she was detained for a week. She protested the illegal detention to the local government many times, but no one addressed her complaint. The police arrested her again not long after.
She was tried on December 28, 2016, in the Tengzhou City Court. Her lawyer argued that no law in China criminalizes Falun Gong, and thus she had every right to seek justice against Jiang for infringing upon her constitutional right to freedom of belief.
Pan declared, “We always give Falun Gong people heavy sentences. I can sentence them however I want!”
He sentenced Ms. Zhang to 3.5 years.
The same court also sentenced Ms. Zhao Hongxia to prison. Ms. Zhao was arrested on November 3, 2015, for filing a criminal complaint against Jiang. She was tried on July 4, 2016, and sentenced to 4 years on November 2. She is appealing the verdict. The clerk in her case was Zhang Furong, but details regarding the judges remain to be investigated.
Background
Falun Gong teaches people to follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, leading to improved health and moral standards. More than 100 million people have taken up the practice since it was introduced to the public in 1992 in Changchun, China.
Out of jealousy of Falun Gong’s vast popularity and fear of losing control, Jiang initiated the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999.
The persecution has led to the deaths of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners over the past 17 years. Many more have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs in the state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from living practitioners for profit. Jiang is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of this brutal persecution.
Now that Chinese law allows citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, over 200,000 practitioners have filed criminal complaints against the former dictator. People from other countries, including politicians, are speaking out in support of the movement to file these lawsuits. More than 1.8 million people in the Asian-Pacific region have signed petitions to report Jiang's crimes and to support the lawsuits.
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