(Minghui.org) An 82-year-old Beijing resident was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 2,000 yuan by Daxing District Court on April 18, 2019, for not renouncing her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

After the local Daxing Detention Center refused to accept her because of her physical condition, the police sent her home on the same day and asked her to wait for further notice.

Ms. Ma Xiuying was first arrested on December 30, 2013, for distributing Falun Gong materials. She was kept for 10 hours at Fangshan Police Station in Beijing before being released.

Ms. Ma's latest ordeal began when she was arrested on September 25, 2015, after being reported for distributing Falun Gong-related materials. She was later released on bail, but two officers deceived her into returning to the police station on March 31, 2016, by asking her to finish some paperwork. She was then sent to Daxing Detention Center and put on criminal detention. On April 30, 2016, she was released on bail for the second time.

Ms. Ma boarded a train for an out-of-town trip on June 7, 2017, and she was arrested moments before the train was to depart. The police claimed that she had violated her bail condition by attempting to run away. She was put on criminal detention for the second time and then released on bail for the third time on July 14.

The Daxing District Court held a hearing of Ms. Ma on November 5, 2018. She testified in her own defense. She argued that it's her constitutional right to practice Falun Gong and that she didn't violate any law by distributing Falun Gong materials. She also cited a notice from China publication bureau in which they revoked the ban of publication of Falun Gong books in 2011. The judge convicted her in April 2019.