(Minghui.org) Three Jiaohe City, Jilin Province, residents were detained incommunicado for over a year for practicing Falun Gong. They were sentenced to prison almost a year ago, it has now been confirmed.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999.
Ms. Zhu Minglan, Ms. Liu Jialan and Ms. Shan Fulian were arrested outside of a village on the evening of April 13, 2020. As Ms. Zhu refused to tell the police her home address, two officers rolled up a stack of paper and whipped her in the face. Her ears rang and her mind went blank. Ms. Shan was also beaten and suffered prolonged pain in her ears. The police later found the addresses of all three women and ransacked their homes. The practitioners were released days later.
The police searched Ms. Zhu and Ms. Liu’s homes again on January 13, 2021. Both practitioners were taken to the police station and ordered to admit that the Falun Gong informational materials found in the village’s apartment building were distributed by them. The two women were interrogated from 2 p.m. to 1 a.m. and then released.
Two weeks later, on January 28, all three practitioners were taken to the Shulan City Procuratorate, and each was interrogated by two prosecutors. Ms. Zhu said she would like to retract her testimony after her arrest, as she made the confession when her mind was unclear after being beaten. Both she and Ms. Liu refused to plead guilty and maintained that they hadn’t done anything wrong by practicing Falun Gong or raising awareness of the persecution.
Both Ms. Zhu and Ms. Liu went to the Shulan City Procuratorate on February 8 and tried to file a complaint against the police for beating them. The procuratorate’s vice president Zhang Fengshuang said to them that it’s wrong for the police to beat people. But when the practitioners raised the demand for the prosecutor to dismiss their case, Zhang told them that their case was special and it had been forwarded to the Jilin City Procuratorate for instructions on how to handle it.
The practitioners were informed by the Shulan City Court through text messages on February 27 that they were indicted. The police took them back into custody at the Jilin City Detention Center on March 2, after deceiving them into going to the police station for coronavirus DNA tests. Ms. Shan’s husband, Mr. Rong Genxiang, was also arrested and held in custody until August 2021.
The three practitioners were held incommunicado after being arrested again. The Shulan City Court held a secret hearing in July 2021 without informing their families. Only when a guard at Jilin Women’s Prison called their families on January 27, 2022, did they find out that their loved ones had been sentenced.
The practitioners’ families finally received their verdicts on February 19: Ms. Zhu was sentenced to 5 years, Ms. Liu to 5.5 years, and Ms. Shan to 7 or 7.5 years.
Related reports:
Two Jilin Residents Detained Incommunicado for One Year and Counting
Eight Arrested in Two Days, Three of Them Beaten Following an Earlier Arrest
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