(Minghui.org) Four residents of Xingning City, Guangdong Province are facing trial for their shared faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Liao Juanna, Mr. Li Zhuozhong, and his wife Ms. Liao Yuanqun were arrested on April 19, 2024. Mr. Xie Yujun was arrested days later on April 25. Mr. Li developed a serious medical condition shortly after his arrest, and he has since been isolated in the hospital. The authorities also refused to release him to attend his mother’s funeral, when she died in July 2024.
The police submitted the practitioners’ joint case to the Xingning City Procuratorate in late July. When Ms. Liao Yuanqun and Mr. Xie’s lawyers went to review the case file, a total of six scrolls were labeled “confidential,” in early August 2024. The lawyers were not allowed to make photocopies or take photos of those documents.
Mr. Xie’s family and the lawyer tried to submit letters to the police and prosecutors to dismiss his case on August 19 and 20, but to no avail.
The Xingning City Procuratorate transferred the practitioners’ case to the Meixian District Procuratorate on August 20, and prosecutor Peng Qiuhong was assigned to it.
Ms. Liao Yuanqun’s lawyer visited her on the morning of August 26. She was in good spirits. She told the lawyer that two staffers from the Meixian District Procuratorate had ordered her to sign a statement to plead guilty, but she refused to sign it. The lawyer went to the procuratorate in the afternoon to review her case document, but still wasn’t allowed to make photocopies or take pictures of it. The lawyer also submitted a letter, urging the prosecutor to dismiss Ms. Liao’s case. It’s not clear whether he received a response to the letter.
Mr. Xie’s lawyer visited him two days later on August 28. He told the lawyer that Xing Zhengquan, head of the Xingning City Domestic Security Division, had come with two officers to interrogate him around August 19. They attempted to force him to write a statement renouncing Falun Gong, and promised to release him if he wrote it. He refused to comply. Xing also told Mr. Xie that they had harassed his college student daughter, Ms. Xie Xiaoting, and threatened to arrest her as well. After Xing left, two female prosecutors also came to depose Mr. Xie, and questioned him about why he persisted in practicing Falun Gong. He said he practiced Falun Gong to stay fit, but he refused to sign the deposition.
Mr. Xie’s lawyer also went to the procuratorate to review his case document after the visit. When he complained to prosecutor Peng about not being allowed to make photocopies or take photos of the document, Peng dodged it by saying that the document had just arrived and she wasn’t familiar with the case.
When Mr. Li’s lawyer traveled from Beijing to Xingning City on August 30 to work on his case, the procuratorate didn’t allow him to make photocopies or take photos of the case document. He spent over two hours arguing with the staffers, but to no avail. Before leaving, he submitted a formal request to make photocopies and take photos of the document.
The lawyer and family then went to the Meizhou City Third People’s Hospital, where Mr. Li had been held in isolation since April 2024. He previously communicated with his family that he wasn’t given napkins. When his family delivered the napkins to him, they were rejected by the hospital. During the lawyer’s visit, they demanded to deliver some napkins to him again, but were still rejected.
Mr. Li also asked about his mother, who was admitted to an intensive care unit on July 10, 2024, due to complications from diabetes. He also asked the lawyer to remind his daughter to transfer some money to her grandmother every month to cover her living costs and medical expenses.
Unbeknown to Mr. Li, his mother passed away in late July. Following her hospitalization, his brother, sister, and daughter kept calling the police, demanding that they release him to see his mother, but all of the requests were rejected. After his mother’s passing, the family called the police again, hoping that they would allow him to attend his mother’s funeral, but they were still rejected.
The lawyer did not break the tragic news to Mr. Li for fear he might not take it well. After the visitation, the lawyer returned to the procuratorate to follow up on his request to make photocopies of Mr. Li’s case documents. The staffers initially refused to provide a written reply. With the lawyer’s strong request, they gave him a piece of paper, without any official stamp or signature. The reply didn’t only deny the lawyer’s request to make photocopies or take pictures of the case file, but also prohibited him from handcopying sections from the document, and only allowed him to read it.
With the lawyer’s further demand, the staffer stamped the reply. The lawyer later filed a complaint against the procuratorate. After they found out about it, they contacted the lawyer and attempted to take the stamped reply back. When the lawyer rejected, the staffer who received him brought Li Peijun, the president of the procuratorate, to talk to him. The lawyer was shocked to see Li tearing apart the piece of paper after a very brief conversation between the two. The lawyer called the police immediately. Officers of the Fuda Police Station arrived in half an hour, but it’s not clear how the police handled the matter.
Ms. Liao Yuanqun and Mr. Xie’s lawyers came to visit them again in mid-September. They also went to the Meixian District Procuratorate, still demanding to have full access to their clients’ case documents. They argued that with all other Falun Gong cases in the region, they had been able to freely make copies of the documents at the court. But no matter what the lawyers said, the procuratorate staffers barred them from making photocopies or taking photos of the case document. The lawyers submitted letters, urging the prosecutor not to indict their clients, before they left.
According to information obtained by Minghui.org on September 24, the four practitioners had been indicted and their case had been transferred to the court.
Meizhou City, Guangdong Province: 14 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested in Three Days
Mr. Xie Yujun, Mr. Chen Shenghui, and Ms. Wen Chunru Arrested