(Minghui.org) The Changchun City Intermediate Court in Jilin Province ruled on May 18, 2023 to uphold a 3.5-year prison sentence against local resident Ms. Yan Lijuan.
Judge He Fu of the intermediate court issued the ruling hours after he lied to Ms. Yan’s lawyer that she didn’t want any legal presentation and blocked the lawyer from reviewing her case documents. Ms. Yan’s family found out later that judge He never even told her about her lawyer.
Judge Wang Ya’nan of the Chaoyang District Court had also committed dereliction of duty in sentencing Ms. Yan. He created obstacles intentionally in order to prevent her lawyer (the same one who later represented her in the appeals case) from defending her. While the lawyer was trying to overcome the obstacles, Wang went ahead and sentenced Ms. Yan without notifying her lawyer or family.
Ms. Yan, 60, was targeted simply because of her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. She used to suffer from a severe heart condition and a pelvic cyst. Sometimes she even had trouble holding chopsticks. After taking up Falun Gong in 1998, she regained her health, gave up her short temper, and became considerate.
Ms. Yan’s latest ordeal stemmed from her arrest at home on November 19, 2021. The arresting officers from the Dongzhan Police Station confiscated over ten of her Falun Gong books, a photo of Falun Gong’s founder, and a computer. They kept her detained at the Weizigou Lockup for ten days before taking her to the Changchun City No.4 Detention Center. She was denied admission after she failed the required physical examination. The police then released her on bail on December 3, 2021.
Officers from the Dongzhan Police Station broke into Ms. Yan’s home at 6 a.m. on October 24, 2022, and arrested her.
The police then called Ms. Yan’s son and asked him to pay a fine on her behalf. Her son questioned why she was taken back into custody and what the fine was about. The police remained silent over the phone, so Ms. Yan’s son said he didn’t have any money to pay. The police then kept Ms. Yan in custody and later got her admitted to the Changchun City No. 4 Detention Center.
The police never notified Ms. Yan’s son of her whereabouts. When he called the police station to inquire about her detention location, officer Yuan Xinjie said that his mother was in quarantine and asked him to wait for them to call him back. They never called back, so he kept calling the police station, but of all the calls went unanswered.
Ms. Yan’s son finally got to talk to Yuan around February 2023. Yuan said that they had submitted her case to the Chaoyang District Procuratorate. Her son called the procuratorate several times, but the person who answered the call always said they hadn’t received her case yet and asked him to call back later on. When he called two days later, prosecutor Lyu Jinming said they had indicted Ms. Yan and forwarded her case to the Chaoyang District Court.
Ms. Yan’s son hired an out-of-town lawyer to represent her. He called judge Wang Ya’nan and asked what was needed for the out-of-town lawyer to meet with his mother and review her case documents. Wang said that the court had appointed a lawyer for Ms. Yan, and her son was adamant that they not use the court-appointed lawyer, who would certainly be instructed to enter a guilty plea for Ms. Yan.
Wang then asked Ms. Yan’s son to secure approval from the Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau. By law, judicial bureaus have no involvement at all in defense attorneys’ visits with their clients or review of their case documents. The Chaoyang District Judicial Bureau, however, demanded more than ten different documents from the out-of-town lawyer before they could issue an approval.
It was reported by Minghui.org last year that the High Court of Jilin Province issued a secret document, No. [2020] 226, which demanded anyone, including professional lawyers, secure letters from their local justice bureaus to show that they don’t practice Falun Gong themselves before they are allowed to represent Falun Gong practitioners in the province. Most Falun Gong practitioners in Jilin were denied legal representation this way.
While Ms. Yan’s lawyer was busy preparing the documents, judge Wang held a secret hearing of Ms. Yan’s case without notifying the lawyer or her family of the court date or court location. Wang soon sentenced Ms. Yan [the exact dates of the hearing and sentencing still remain unknown]. When her son asked Wang why she did not inform them, Wang claimed that she’d posted the information on the court’s bulletin board and it was their own fault if they did not see it.
Ms. Yan filed an appeal with the Changchun City Intermediate Court, and the same out-of-town lawyer agreed to represent her again. Her son submitted her power of attorney to judge He Fu, who returned the document to the lawyer’s law firm without notifying him. The lawyer then re-mailed the power of attorney to the judge.
The lawyer traveled to Changchun on May 18, 2023 to review her case documents. Judge He claimed that Ms. Yan told him that she didn’t want any paid legal representation in her appeals case. The lawyer asked if the judge had ever told her about the fact that her son had hired him to represent her. The judge said he did, but reiterated that Ms. Yan insisted that she use no paid lawyer in her appeals case.
The lawyer was thus unable to review her case documents and judge He ruled hours later to uphold Ms. Yan’s original verdict without holding a hearing.
Ms. Yan’s son asked if she knew about the lawyer he hired for her when he visited her at the detention center on July 7, 2023. She said, “Not at all! No one had ever told me about that. In fact, judge He came to talk to me after you’d hired the lawyer, but he made no mention of it. He just asked me if I’d like to use a court-appointed lawyer for free, and I said no because I knew they’d enter a guilty plea for me.”