(Minghui.org) A Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, resident serving time for practicing Falun Gong is in serious condition with high blood pressure. She is on a hunger strike to protest the persecution.
Ms. Luo Yi was admitted to the second division in Sichuan Province Women’s Prison on January 15, 2025. The prison barred her family from visiting her with the excuse that she refused to renounce Falun Gong.
Her family hired a lawyer to visit her, and the lawyer said her situation wasn’t good. On February 8, 2025, the family received a call from the prison, saying that Ms. Luo was on a hunger strike to protest the persecution and was in serious condition with very high blood pressure. The family went to the prison on February 10 and demanded to see her, but the prison authorities still turned them down. They appealed to the local procuratorate and provincial prison administration bureau, but still to no avail.
Ms. Luo was arrested on May 24, 2023, with five other practitioners. The police held them in the Xinjin Brainwashing Center and told their families that they were under “residential surveillance” at a designated location for “inciting subversion of state power,” but without revealing the specific location.
Judge Hu Weiwei of the Wenjiang District Court split their joint-case into indivisual cases and scheduled eight one-hour hearings for July 25, 2024. Ms. Luo’s daughter was initially approved to be her family defender, but judge Hu did not allow her to review Ms. Luo’s case document and indictment, insisting that only a lawyer could do so. With no other options, Ms. Luo’s daughter hired a lawyer for her. When she went with the lawyer to the courthouse to review her mother’s case document, judge Hu reversed his decision to allow her to be Ms. Hu’s family defender, with the excuse that she was pregnant.
In addition, judge Hu only allowed Ms. Luo’s lawyer to read and hand-copy notes on the case document; the lawyer could not make photocopies or take pictures of any documents. The lawyer filed a complaint against Hu, who eventually allowed him to make photocopies, but he was still not allowed to take pictures. Judge Hu also ordered the lawyer to sign a confidentiality agreement.
On the day of the hearing, Ms. Luo’s daughter demanded the judges present the legal basis for their decision. Because she insisted on defending her mother, the judges adjourned the session and asked the daughter to sign a responsibility waiver should anything happen to her during the defense. She was eventually allowed to represent her mother.
The daughter and the lawyer entered a not guilty plea for Ms. Luo. They argued that no law in China has ever criminalized Falun Gong and the prosecutor failed to present evidence to demonstrate how her mother “undermined law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to frame and sentence Falun Gong practitioners in China. The presiding judge, Dong, kept interrupting their defense and claimed that “the government had long ago decided how to sentence Falun Gong practitioners and we don’t need to discuss that here.” He refused to present the relevant legal basis when he was pressured by Ms. Luo’s daughter.
The judge sentenced Ms. Luo to two years and eight months at the end of the hearing.
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