(Clearwisdom.net) In the summer of 2003, Mr. Hong Wei, a graduate of Beijing University and a graduate student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Microbiology Institute, was secretly sentenced to ten years in prison for allegedly "disturbing the public order." He is currently jailed in a Chongqing City prison.

Mr. Hong Wei used to live in Pishan County, near Chongqing City, and began practicing Falun Gong in 1994. He is known for his willingness to help others, and is widely regarded by his classmates as a good person. In 1998, after receiving his Bachelor of Science degree with excellent grades from Beijing University, he was permitted to directly enter the postgraduate program at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Microbiology Institute without taking any qualifying exams.

On April 25, 1999, Hong Wei went with fellow practitioners to Zhongnanhai [the government complex in Beijing] to appeal for Falun Dafa. When the persecution first began on July 20, 1999, Mr. Hong persisted in his practice of Falun Gong. In early September 1999, Mr. Hong, with fellow Academy graduate student Li Xiaodong and a third practitioner, were practicing the Falun Gong exercises outdoors at the Zhongguancun Sports Grounds, near their dormitory. Acting on a tip, the police arrested and jailed the three practitioners at the Qinghe Detention Center for over thirty days, claiming that the trio's exercising had constituted an "illegal rally." They were imprisoned without warm clothing, with the cold weather season quickly approaching, and were not released until after China's National Day (October 1).

After Mr. Hong returned from the detention center, the Academy authorities and officers from the local police station kept a close watch on him. They regularly detained him during so-called "sensitive periods" and national holidays. Hong Wei was an "important target" on their blacklist, and because he refused to renounce Falun Gong, they made several futile attempts at brainwashing him. In January 2000, after one of his several arrests, the Microbiology Institute suspended him. The authorities manipulated Mr. Hong's relationship with his long widowed father, by twice making his father travel to Beijing in order to pressure him to renounce Falun Gong. This caused the elder Mr. Hong to become ill from worry and stress. In October 2000, Hong Wei was summarily dismissed from the Institute. To avoid police harassment, he was forced to become homeless and lead a difficult life moving from place to place. In late 2001 or early 2002, Mr. Hong was again arrested. In the summer of 2003, after having been detained without charges for over a year, Hong Wei was unjustly accused of "disturbing the public order," and was secretly given a ten-year sentence at a Chongqing City prison.