(Minghui.org) A veteran in Pingliang City, Gansu Province was recently sentenced to one year for his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been targeted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Yang Zonglin, 68, was arrested on the afternoon of March 21, 2025, after a teacher accused him of talking to her students about Falun Gong. Liang Tao and other officers from the Kongtong District Domestic Security Office broke into his home and confiscated his Falun Gong books and portrait of Falun Gong’s founder.
Mr. Yang was given 15 days at the Kongtong District Detention Center. When his family went to pick him up on April 5, the police refused to release him, saying that they had submitted his case to the Kongtong District Procuratorate. He was issued a formal arrest warrant on April 9 and indicted at an unknown time. He stood trial at the Kongtong District Court on July 21 and was sentenced to one year.
Mr. Yang has developed severe medical conditions due to torture in custody, including heart disease and stomach pain. He is weak and emaciated with a hunchback.
During the trial on July 21, Mr. Yang’s lawyer argued that the prosecutor failed to demonstrate how his client’s practicing of Falun Gong had caused any harm to anyone or society at large.
The lawyer pointed out that according to China’s criminal law, in order to convict a suspect of any crime, the prosecution bears the burden of proof and must show that: 1) the suspect is mentally competent and understands the consequences of their actions, 2) the suspect must have had a criminal intent to cause harm, 3) the suspect must have committed a criminal act, and 4) the criminal act must have violated the legal rights of others (for instance, the criminal act of murder violates the victim’s legal right to live). Except for the first element, the prosecutor was unable to address the other three elements.
The prosecution listed seventeen witnesses, including the aforementioned teacher, a parent, and fifteen students. But none of them appeared in court to accept cross-examination.
The surveillance videos provided by the police were blurry and the person recorded in it was wearing a mask. Yet the police still managed to have the witnesses “confirm” it was Mr. Yang.
Additionally, the police couldn’t detect Mr. Yang’s fingerprints on the Falun Gong materials included in the prosecution evidence, but they still determined that Mr. Yang distributed the materials to the students. Even if he did distribute the materials, he didn’t violate any law, given his Constitutional rights of freedom of expression, said the lawyer.
The lawyer further pointed out that the cult list published by the Ministry of Public Security in 2004 didn’t include Falun Gong in it and that the National Press and Publication Administration had repealed the ban on Falun Gong publications on March 1, 2011. Both the judge and prosecutor appeared to be shocked to hear it. Yet the judge still convicted Mr. Yang at the end of the trial.
Mr. Yang took up Falun Gong in 1995 when he was still in the army. After the persecution started in 1999, he remained firm in his faith and was arrested nine times and harassed countless times. He served two labor camp terms at the Gansu Province First Forced Labor Camp. The guards once hung him up from the labor camp’s front gate for several days in the freezing winter. The handcuffs cut into his wrists, causing severe infection and frostbite. He was later released on medical parole after he had gastric bleeding due to force-feeding.
In 2021, the local authorities frequently harassed Mr. Yang and ordered him to sign statements to renounce Falun Gong. As he refused to comply, the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-legal agency tasked with overseeing the persecution, ordered the local social security bureau to stop his pension payments. He wrote to the bureau, explaining that he didn’t violate any law in practicing Falun Gong and it was illegal to suspend his pension. In retaliation, the police broke into his home with the help of a locksmith on October 21, 2021 and arrested him.