(Minghui.org) After nearly one year of detention, a Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province resident, who was arrested last year while visiting the child of a deceased friend, was sentenced to four years in prison.
Ms. Jin Yuhong was arrested on December 11, 2019, while visiting Ms. Gong Yu at her college and planning to give her 10,000 yuan living expenses. Ms. Gong’s mother, Ms. Li Yanjie, had fallen to her death while trying to escape an arrest four days earlier. The police targeted Ms. Li because of her faith in Falun Gong, which Ms. Jin also practices.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Jin was held in a hotel, interrogated, and deprived of sleep for 12 days before being transferred to the Qitaihe Detention Center, where she has been detained incommunicado since. She held three hunger strikes to protest the persecution. Her weight quickly dropped from 130 pounds to below 100.
The police also arrested and interrogated Ms. Jin’s husband, Mr. Ren Tianwen, who doesn’t practice Falun Gong. They poured cold water on his head and opened the window to let the freezing wind blow on him. In addition to the savage beating that broke two of Mr. Ren’s ribs, the police also forced him to eat feces and drink urine. Only after he made several attempts to commit suicide did the police release him on bail.
Ms. Jin’s lawyer was given the runaround when he tried to file complaints against the detention center for mistreating his client and denying his visit. Meanwhile, the guards lied to Ms. Jin that her family didn’t hire a lawyer to represent her.
Ms. Jin was tried in the detention center by the Taoshan District Court on November 5, 2020. Her lawyer entered a not guilty plea for her and she also testified in her own defense.
Ms. Jin said that the Constitution protects one’s freedom of belief and one can’t be prosecuted for one’s thoughts.
The prosecutor read a long list of prosecution evidence, which included findings from the police, such as how many books and documents were in an electronic reader allegedly owned by Ms. Jin and how many words were in those books and documents. Ms. Jin denied having owned the electronic reader. She demanded the police to re-examine the device with her fingerprints.
The prosecutor also accused Ms. Jin of attempting to spread information about Falun Gong, but her lawyer refuted that if she was only “attempting” to do it, it meant that she hadn’t done it yet and she shouldn’t have been charged for something she didn’t do.
As Ms. Jin was charged with “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” her lawyer questioned the prosecutor which law’s enforcement was undermined by her and what evidence was there to support the allegation.
“Don’t you feel that these charges are ridiculous? When you convict a nice person like my client, we are losing one good person in the society, and her family is losing a good wife, mother, and daughter.” Ms. Jin’s lawyer said.
Ms. Jin’s lawyer learned on November 20 that the judge sentenced her to four years.
