(Minghui.org) Fourteen residents of Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province were arrested in two days in November 2020 for practicing Falun Gong and four of them have been sentenced to prison.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Wang Luhua and Ms. Zhang Lihua, as well as eleven other local Falun Gong practitioners, were arrested on November 22, 2020. Ms. Wang and Ms. Zhang were released on bail at around 3 a.m. the next day, and the police arrested a fourteenth practitioner hours later.
The Ranghulu District Court scheduled a joint hearing for July 1, 2022 to try Ms. Wang, Ms. Zhang, and Ms. Han Lihua, another practitioner arrested on the same day. The trio was denied entry to the courthouse on the court date however, because they didn’t know they were required to do COVID tests. They were then taken to a local hospital to have the tests done, before being taken to the Daqing City No. 2 Detention Center, which declined to accept them because the COVID test results were not yet available. The police then took the three practitioners to another hospital for physical examinations and all were found to have some health issues. The police nonetheless took them back to the detention center, which again refused to accept them due to their health conditions. The police eventually allowed all three practitioners to go home after 11 p.m. that night.
The court held a hearing of Ms. Han’s case on August 2 and sentenced her to eight years in prison and a 50,000-yuan fine in late December.
Ms. Wang and Ms. Zhang’s families recently confirmed that both of them have been sentenced to 4.5 years, but details of their trial and sentencing aren’t clear. They are currently appealing their verdicts.
In addition to the three practitioners, another practitioner arrested on the same day, Ms. Wang Jianhui, was also sentenced to five years with a 30,000-yuan fine by the same court on June 3, 2021. She has been subjected to beatings and other physical torture after being taken to the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison in early 2022.
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