(Minghui.org) A 72-year-old woman was sentenced to four years and fined 40,000 yuan in October 2019 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
This is the third time that Ms. Shen Huiding, a resident of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, has been sentenced to prison for her faith. She has appealed against the verdict.
Ms. Shen was arrested on January 17, 2019 after being reported for talking to people about Falun Gong. Her arrest was approved one month later. She was indicted in late May 2019.
Ms. Shen was tried by Xihu District Court on June 27, 2019 and convicted four months later.
Ms. Shen fainted several times while being detained at Hangzhou City Detention Center. The authorities refused to release her on bail or provide timely medical care for her. Instead, they transferred her to Fuyang District Detention Center in the suburbs in July 2019, without informing her family.
Staff members from Hangzhou City 610 Office, an extralegal agency created specifically to persecute Falun Gong, went to the detention center several times and attempted to pressure Ms. Shen to renounce her faith. She refused to comply.
After her family found out she had been transferred, they went to the detention center to deliver winter clothes for her. The guards only accepted a portion of it, with the excuse that they didn’t have enough room for her things.
Ms. Shen, a retired employee of Hangzhou City Steel Factory, has been repeatedly arrested and sent to brainwashing centers since the communist regime ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999.
She was given two years of forced labor in April 2002, five years in prison in 2005, and another three years and nine months in prison in September 2012.
Her family is now very worried about her. Her adult daughter, who is disabled and is unable to take care of herself, is longing for her return.
