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Qingdao 610 Office Denies Lawyer-Client Visitation Rights after Torture Is Exposed

June 30, 2013 |   By a Minghui correspondent from Shandong Province, China

(Minghui.org) The Qingdao Municipal Public Security Bureau mobilized nearly 100 police officers on May 2, 2013 in order to arrest Falun Gong practitioners Yang Naijian, Lu Xueqin and their driver Li Hao (a non-practitioner). Subsequently, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) media boasted cracking a “major criminal case”, and slandered practitioners for taking “mock torture pictures”.

Following the arrest, Li Hao's lawyer and family attempted to visit him on June 9 in the detention center. A guard told them that a written notice from the Lichang 610 Office stated that lawyers involved with Li Hao's case were not permitted to visit him, since there were “secret issues” associated with the case.

One wonders, if the “mock torture” pictures were truly fraudulent, how could they involve “secret issues”? The 610 Office actually verified that the mock torture pictures produced by Falun Gong practitioners are treated by the CCP as “top secret” because they uncovered their brutal and unlawful persecution activities.

After they were denied visitation rights, Li Hao's lawyer and family went to the Qingdao Procuratorate to file a complaint. As before, the guards in the Procuratorate's office repeatedly made things difficult for them. With much effort on the part of the lawyer, they finally were able to meet with Zhang Zhaocai, director of the Supervision Department. Li Hao's lawyer told Zhang that the detention center staff had denied him visitation rights. The lawyer showed Zhang the trumped-up charges on the notice of criminal detention, and stated that Li Hao's case didn't involve any “secret issues”, and therefore, the detention center authorities had no right to prevent him from seeing his client.

Zhang said that without a special request from the unit that handled the case, the detention center generally didn't prevent lawyers from visiting their clients. However, Zhang said that he'd been ordered by the authorities of a requirement for the Bureau of Justice to put the case on file first. The lawyer said, “According to the law, any lawyer with a valid certificate to practice law and power of attorney from his client has the right to see his client.” Zhang replied that he would investigate the situation and provided his office contact number (86-532-8301 1211).

Li Hao's lawyer and family went to the Public Security Bureau of Lichang District that afternoon to meet with Liu Kebo, head of the 610 Office. The guard called Liu from his office and told him that Li Hao's lawyer and family had come to see him. Liu told the guard to tell them that he was not there, and asked them to drop off their documents at the security office, where he'd pick them up later. Li Hao's lawyer asked the guard: “If Liu answered the phone, why did you say he's not here?” The guard mumbled something but didn't answer directly. After dropping off the power of attorney, they left.

Practitioner Ms. Lu Xueqin was reported to be in poor health when she was arrested on May 2. Her family is greatly concerned; her lawyer tried to see her but was denied visitation rights by the guards.

According to a Minghui report on June 11, the CCP media claimed that Falun Gong practitioners had used torture photos overseas to “defame” the national image of China. However, this question must be asked: Have Falun Gong practitioners been indeed persecuted and tortured? If so, then using simulation photos to expose the persecution doesn't constitute a crime.

Distortion of the facts, spreading rumors and discrediting China are in fact actions of the Qingdao police and Jiang Zemin's regime, who initiated and perpetrated the persecution of Falun Gong.