(Minghui.org) Shortly after a destitute woman who made a living by picking recyclable trash borrowed 14,000 yuan to treat her son’s blood clot in his leg, the police confiscated the money and arrested her on November 16, 2020.
The police claimed that Ms. Bai Baohua, a resident of Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, intended to use the money to make informational materials about Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Together with the Falun Gong books, 500 calendars with information about Falun Gong and many other personal belongings confiscated from Ms. Bai during her arrest, the life-saving money was submitted to the procuratorate as “prosecution evidence” against Ms. Bai.
Following Ms. Bai’s arrest, the 56-year-old woman was first taken to the local police station and then to a hospital for physical examination. As Ms. Bai refused to let the nurse draw her blood, a police officer kicked her in the back and another one grabbed her hair and slapped her in the face twice. The officers then forcibly held her while the nurse drew her blood.
While Ms. Bai was held at the Yuanbaoshan District Detention Center, the police and prosecutor came several times to interrogate her, trying to force her to plead guilty for “attempting to produce Falun Gong materials.”
Ms. Bai’s arrest and confiscation of the money dealt a big blow to her mother-in-law, who fell ill and soon passed away.
The Chifeng Intermediate Court scheduled a hearing of Ms. Bai on February 3, 2021. After the judge forbade her lawyer from entering a not guilty plea for her, using the pandemic as an excuse, her family applied to have the hearing postponed. It’s not clear whether the judge approved their request.
Ms. Bai was sentenced to four years in early April 2021. Although the judge gave her ten days to appeal the sentence, the Tomb-sweeping festival already took up five days. It’s not clear whether Ms. Bai has successfully submitted her appeal.
According to available information collected by Minghui.org, at least 97 Falun Gong practitioners in Chifeng City were harassed and arrested in 2020. Wang Bing, the head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee in Yuanbaoshan District, orchestrated several brainwashing sessions against practitioners, with Kang Jianwei and Liu Gang from the Inner Mongolia Women’s Prison in charge.
In the persecution of Falun Gong, the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-judiciary agency overseeing public security and judiciary branches, has played a major role in making and executing persecution policies.
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