(Minghui.org) The Yanqing District Court in Beijing sentenced a woman to one year in prison with two years probation on May 28, 2024, only to secretly increase the sentence to four and a half years with a 9,000-yuan fine two weeks later without due process. Ms. Zhang Lianyu was recently notified to have a physical exam in preparation for prison admission.
Ms. Zhang’s ordeal stemmed from her arrest six years ago for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. At 10 a.m. on May 14, 2018, two plainclothes officers from the Xiadu Police Station showed up at her home. One of them talked to her while the other walked around. When he noticed a printer and a picture of the founder of Falun Gong, the second officer immediately called for backup. They ignored Ms. Zhang when she demanded to see their IDs. They raided her home and confiscated her Falun Gong books.
After ransacking the place for five hours, the police took Ms. Zhang and the confiscated items to the Xiadu Police Station. They drove her to their supervising agency, the Yanqing District Police Department, at midnight. Two hours later, they transferred her to the Changping District Detention Center. She was denied admission after she failed the required physical exam. The police took her back to the Xiadu Police Station at 6 a.m. on May 15, 2018. She was released on bail at noon.
Afterwards, the police kept harassing Ms. Zhang at home, attempting to make her renounce her faith. Ms. Zhang had no way but to live away from home. Her health declined and she eventually returned home. As soon as the police found out about it, they sped up prosecuting her.
Officer Liu Xinxing from the Xiadu Police Station, prosecutor Liu Xueyan from the Yanqing District Procuratorate, and judge Li Shuang and her clerk from the Yanqing District Court visited her on October 23, 2019, to tell her that she had been indicted and a court date was scheduled for November 14 that year.
It was unclear whether the hearing on November 14, 2019 ever took place. But Ms. Zhang was later arrested in June 2021 and detained briefly.
Judge Li led several people to Ms. Zhang’s home on May 15, 2024. They promised her husband to only give her a one year prison sentence if he cooperated with them in holding a hearing at his home. Eager to protect his wife, Ms. Zhang’s husband persuaded her to do the at-home trial in order to get a lighter sentence.
Judge Li sentenced Ms. Zhang to one year in prison with two years probation at the end of the hearing. She refused to sign the court proceedings, so her husband signed it on her behalf as he was still led to believe that he had to cooperate in order to “seal” the lighter sentence.
A clerk delivered an official verdict to Ms. Zhang’s home on May 28, 2024. Her husband received it and immediately hid it without reading the content. He thought it was the same one-year-term-with-two-year-probation. Additionally, he did not want his wife to see the verdict and protest against it.
The court recently notified Ms. Zhang to have a physical exam in preparation for prison admission. Her husband was shocked, because he thought his wife would only need to serve a probationary term as promised. The court reminded him that his wife had actually been sentenced to four and a half years with a 9,000-yuan fine. He then took out the official verdict and saw it was not the light sentence as he thought it was. He vowed to seek justice for his wife.