(Minghui.org) A Jilin City, Jilin Province resident was sentenced to three years and six months in prison in May 2019 for practicing Falun Gong, a mind-body improvement practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Mr. Yue Naiming filed an appeal, and Jilin City Intermediate Court ruled in July to uphold his verdict. He was transferred to Gongzhuling Prison on August 27, 2019.

Mr. Yue's family asked to visit him in the prison and were told that they must provide a letter from their local 610 Office confirming that they don't practice Falun Gong themselves.

The 610 Office is an extralegal agency created specifically to persecute Falun Gong.

Mr. Yue's family later got the letter from the 610 Office and met him in the prison, but they weren't allowed to send anything to him, including winter clothes. A guard closely monitored their visitation.

Mr. Yue, 56, was arrested on October 30, 2018 by five plainclothes officers who sneaked into his home while he was putting up window curtains. The police ransacked his place and confiscated his Falun Gong books and related materials.

When his family went to the local police station to demand his release, the officer who received them claimed that the arrest was orchestrated by the police department in Jilin City and Mr. Yue was the seventh Falun Gong practitioner arrested in the same district.

Mr. Yue was tried by Fengman District Court on January 9, 2019. The judge adjourned the hearing in less than ten minutes. The prosecutor from Fengman District Procuratorate recommended a sentence of three to five years.

The judge sentenced Mr. Yue to three and a half years and fined him 5,000 yuan on May 24, 2019. He appealed the verdict to Jilin City Intermediate Court on May 31.

Staff members from Jilin City Procuratorate and Jilin City Intermediate Court met with Mr. Yue at the detention center on July 9 and 12, 2019. They proposed to appoint a lawyer who would enter a guilty plea.

Mr. Yue refused to accept the court-appointed lawyer and requested to have his wife defend him. The judge at the appeals court then demanded that his wife enter a guilty plea for him, or he wouldn't approve her representation.

The police also threatened to deny his child from attending college, in an attempt to pressure him to give up the appeal. Mr. Yue refused to comply.

The intermediate court later upheld his sentence without a hearing.

Mr. Yue used to be an alcoholic and was often seen laying unconscious by the roadside. After he began to practice Falun Gong in 2001, he stopped drinking and moved to Beijing to open a small convenience store.

Because of refusing to renounce his faith, he was repeatedly harassed, arrested and tortured in the past two decades.

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