(Minghui.org) A 51-year-old woman from Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, is awaiting a verdict after being tried in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, for raising awareness of the communist regime’s ongoing persecution of her faith, Falun Gong.
Ms. Lin Jinli, who was born in 1975, took her daughter on vacation in August 2025 to Yangzhou City, where she brought a cell phone. When she used it to send text messages about Falun Gong, the Yangzhou police tracked her down and arrested her on August 10. They also went to Harbin to search her home. Her daughter was released four days later, but Ms. Lin remained detained in Yangzhou.
The Guangling District Court in Yangzhou heard Ms. Lin’s case on January 27, 2026. Her husband traveled over 1,200 miles to Yangzhou to represent her as a non-lawyer defender, but was not allowed to. He was not permitted to speak during the 40-minute-long session. The judge and his clerk simply read aloud several documents but did not call any witnesses to the stand or require the prosecutor to present any evidence. It’s not clear if her lawyer was allowed to defend her.
Ms. Lin’s lawyer and her husband were notified around May 20, 2026, that a second hearing was scheduled for May 22, so they again went to Yangzhou. They learned when they got there the hearing had been canceled. Her husband had to cover her lawyer’s travel expenses.
The second hearing eventually took place on June 2, 2026. Every time Ms. Lin’s lawyer tried to present his defense, the judge stopped him. When he pressed the judge to specify which law his client had allegedly broken and how she had allegedly undermined law enforcement, the judge blurted out, “We’re not going to talk about what the law is today! We’ll only focus on what the prison sentence should be!”
After the 40-minute hearing, Ms. Lin’s husband returned to Harbin to help care for his nearly 80-year-old mother-in-law (his wife had been her sole caregiver), work full-time, and travel back and forth between Harbin and Yangzhou.
Prior to this latest episode of persecution, Ms. Lin was repeatedly targeted for her faith the in Falun Gong. In 2019, she was taking her then-15-year-old daughter to school when the police arrested her and sentenced her to four years. While she was in prison, her husband worked full time and cared for their daughter on his own. The teen missed her mother and often cried.
Related Reports:
Reported in 2025: 4,803 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested or Harassed for Their Faith
Mother of Teenage Girl Sentenced to Four Years for Practicing Falun Gong
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