Hebei Teacher's Appeal Against Wrongful Sentence Rejected, Daughter Files a Motion to Reconsider Her Case
(Minghui.org) After a higher court rejected the appeal against Ms. Zhu Surong’s prison sentence for practicing Falun Gong, her family has filed a motion to reconsider her case.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Zhu Surong
Ms. Zhu, an elementary school teacher in Baoding City, Hebei Province, was arrested on October 11, 2019 after a thief who stole her electric bike reported her to the police after finding Falun Gong materials in the bike’s basket. Instead of arresting the thief, the police arrested Ms. Zhu.
After three court hearings between May 12 and July 6, 2020, Ms. Zhu was sentenced to three years and ten months and fined 50,000 yuan by the Gaoyang Court on September 24, 2020.
For seeking justice for Ms. Zhu, her daughter was fired by the kindergarten she worked at. But it didn’t stop her from appealing the verdict for her mother. At the same time, she also filed complaints against the prosecutors and judges involved in Ms. Zhu’s case for abusing their power and wrongfully convicting Ms. Zhu.
When she submitted the complaint, a staff member of Baoding City Procuratorate was very rude to her and he said, “We have an internal notice. Practicing Falun Gong is illegal. We won’t process cases [seeking justice] for Falun Gong.”
Ms. Zhu’s daughter responded, “Your responsibility is to oversee the judges. Even if my mom has indeed violated the law, the judge himself can’t violate legal procedure in handling the case, let alone my mother didn’t do anything wrong.”
Unable to refute her, the procuratorate staff member attempted to snatch her cellphone, suspecting she had recorded him.
Ms. Zhu’s daughter also went to the local justice bureau and demanded the agency look into the professional qualification of the judges handling her mother’s cases. She filed another complaint about the inaction of the Baoding City Procuratorate to her complaints against the judges. She also went to the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Commission, the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, and other local government agencies to present her case, only to be given the run-around.
On December 16, 2020, the Baoding City Intermediate Court ruled to uphold Ms. Zhu’s original verdict. Her daughter recently filed a motion to reconsider her case on the website of High Court of Hebei Province. She said she knew there is little chance for her mother’s case to be overturned by filing the motion, but she still did it for her mother and she believes that there is still justice in this world.
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