(Minghui.org) After eight months of detention, Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Guan Zhenlin was tried for suing the former head of the Chinese communist regime who ordered the persecution of his spiritual belief 17 years ago.
Mr. Zhang, 41, from Zhangye City, Gansu Province, started to practice Falun Gong in 1997 when he was in college. He was pressured to give it up shortly after the persecution started in 1999. He resumed the practice in 2008, but was subjected to constant arrests and harassment by the police. In 2009, he was secretly tried and sentenced to three years at Jiuquan Prison.
As part of the tidal wave of criminal complaints against the former communist regime's dictator Jiang Zemin across China since May 2015, he filed his, but was shortly arrested in August 2015 and detained at Jiuquan Detention Center.
After eight months of detention, Suzhou District court tried Mr. Guan on March 30, 2016.
Both Mr. Guan and his lawyer defended his innocence and emphasized that no law has ever criminalized Falun Gong or Mr. Guan's freedom of belief to practice it. The judge adjourned the trial without issuing a verdict.
Some local Falun Gong practitioners were harassed and threatened not to attend the trial a few days before it. When some did try to attend to show their support, they were blocked by the police outside the court. The seats in the 100-person court gallery were mostly taken up by government agents.
Before the trial began, more than 30 plainclothes police officers stood outside the court, taking pictures and checking on people who came to the court.
Mr. Guan is still being held at the detention center at the time of writing.
In 1999, Jiang Zemin, as head of the Chinese Communist Party, overrode other Politburo standing committee members and launched the violent suppression of Falun Gong.
The persecution has led to the deaths of many Falun Gong practitioners over the past 16 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs. Jiang Zemin is directly responsible for the inception and continuation of the brutal persecution.
Under his personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.
Chinese law allows for citizens to be plaintiffs in criminal cases, and many practitioners are now exercising that right to file criminal complaints against the former dictator.