(Minghui.org) Eleven Beijing residents sentenced for practicing Falun Gong appeared in the Beijing City No.2 Intermediate Court on May 18, 2023. They had prepared to testify in their own defense but were never allowed to talk during the appeals hearing. The presiding judge simply announced to uphold their original verdicts.
The eleven Falun Gong practitioners were arrested on July 19, 2020, by over 100 police officers, after they were suspected of submitting photos of the city during the pandemic lockdown to The Epoch Times, a U.S.-based media company.
The authorities approved the practitioners’ arrests on August 28. Their families were kept in the dark about their situation, and no formal detention notices were ever sent out.
The Dongcheng District Procuratorate indicted the practitioners and moved their cases to the Dongcheng District Court on April 2, 2021. Their defense lawyers were each given only four hours to review their case documents when the case rested with the procuratorate. After the case moved to the court, the lawyers were asked to all be present at the same time before they could review the documents. They were not allowed to carbon copy or photocopy the documents. Their requests to have electronic copies of the documents were denied.
The judge sentenced the practitioners to two to eight years in prison on January 14, 2022, weeks before the 2022 Winter Olympics was set to be held in China from February 4 to 20.
Except for Ms. Li Jiaxuan and Ms. Jiao Mengjiao who have been released after serving their two-year terms, the other nine practitioners are still held at the Dongcheng District Detention Center at the time of writing.
The nine practitioners are: Ms. Xu Na, serving an eight-year term; Mr. Li Zongze, Mr. Li Lixin, Ms. Zheng Yujie, and Ms. Zheng Yanmei, each serving five-year terms; and Ms. Deng Jingjing, Mr. Zhang Renfei, Mr. Liu Qiang, and Ms. Meng Qingxia, each serving four-year terms.
Related reports:
Eleven Falun Gong Practitioners in Beijing Sentenced to Prison Ahead of Winter Olympics
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Eleven Beijing Residents’ Cases Returned to the Police for Insufficient Evidence
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Beijing Resident Still Detained Seven Weeks After Arrest for His Faith
28-year-old Beijing Resident Faces Trial for Taking Photos of Beijing During the Pandemic
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