(Minghui.org) A Xianning City resident is appealing against her 4-year prison sentence for refusing to renounce Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline being persecuted by the Chinese communist regime.
Ms. Tao Xizhen, 60, was seized from home on August 8, 2014. She was first held at a brainwashing center for two months and then moved to Xian’an District Detention Center, where she remains.
The local procuratorate returned her case to the police several times, citing insufficient evidence. Instead of releasing her, the police worked to fabricate more evidence against her. They even tried, unsuccessfully, to get a few other local Falun Gong practitioners to testify against Ms. Tao.
Ms. Tao was tried on November 13, 2015 and sentenced to 4 years on November 8, 2016.
This is not the first time Ms. Tao has been targeted for her faith. She has been arrested on multiple occasions since the persecution began in 1999. Her husband was traumatized by her repeated arrests and passed away.
Ms. Tao was arrested three times between August and October 1999 for doing the Falun Gong exercises in public or going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong.
Ms. Tao went on a hunger strike to protest the arbitrary detention when she was arrested again on April 25, 2001. An officer used his handcuffs to strike her chest, breaking several of her ribs. He also grabbed her hair to slam her head against the wall. She still refused to cooperate with the force feeding, and the officer knocked her down, causing her head to bounce off the concrete floor.
Ms. Tao was given 2.5 years of forced labor after she was arrested in late 2002. The labor camp released her 16 months later, after she went on a hunger strike in protest.
She was home on July 10, 2008 when the police broke in and confiscated her valuables.
Ms. Tao was arrested in August 2010 after being reported to police for talking to a passenger about Falun Gong on a bus.
The police ransacked her home each time they arrested her. The total cash they took from her amounted to 10,200 yuan. As of today, the police haven’t returned any of the cash or other valuables taken from her home.
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