Guizhou Woman Incarcerated after Appeal Is Denied

(Minghui.org) A Qianxi City, Guizhou Province, resident was recently admitted to the Guizhou Province No.1 Women’s Prison after the intermediary court turned down her appeal to reconsider her seven-year sentence for practicing Falun Gong. Ms. Liu Zongmin’s arrest and incarceration devastated her 84-year-old father. He passed away without seeing her one last time.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Liu, 50, was arrested just after she left home early on July 11, 2019. At 9 a.m. a dozen police officers and residential committee members then broke into her home, where her 84-year-old father and 14-year-old nephew were by themselves. The police held her father, interrogated him, and forced him to sign a deposition.

They took her nephew to the police station to interrogate him, then arrested his mother and sister that evening. At the police station, Ms. Liu’s niece was handcuffed to a metal chair. The police claimed that surveillance cameras had recorded her and her brother distributing Falun Gong materials with Ms. Liu. The police took turns interrogating the siblings and their mother and threatening them to try to secure information about Ms. Liu. They were released around 1 a.m.

Police officers occupied Ms. Liu’s home until 10 p.m. They confiscated her computer, printer, Falun Gong books, a photo of Falun Gong’s founder, over 70,000 yuan in cash (which belonged to her sister Liu Yan and her mother), her sister-in-law’s jewelry, a set of antique banknotes, and her father’s ID. The police refused to provide a list of confiscated items.

This wasn’t the first time that Ms. Liu has been targeted for her faith. Her father, who had been fearful and distressed for two decades due to the persecution, fell ill after her latest arrest and he passed away a year later on August 4, 2020.

Ms. Liu was held in the Qianxi City Drug Rehab Center, the Qianxi City Detention Center, and the Qixingguan District Detention Center in nearby Bijie City. While she was held at the drug rehab center, the police ordered several inmates to forcibly collect her fingerprints.

Ms. Liu appeared in the Qixingguan Court in Bijie on October 29, November 9, and again on November 13, 2020. The judge didn’t permit her lawyer to mention Falun Gong in his defense statement. The prosecutor didn’t provide any evidence to show how Ms. Liu had violated the law.

Ms. Liu was sentenced to seven years and fined 50,000 yuan on April 12, 2021. She appealed to the Qixingguan District Intermediate Court on July 12. The higher court never responded to her appeal. Only when her sister called to inquire about her appeal on September 22 did someone on the staff tell her that the judge had ruled to uphold her original sentence.

Meanwhile, the detention center guards kept refusing to allow Ms. Liu’s family to visit her, with the excuse that her case was still being prosecuted.

Her sister called the police on December 27, 2021, three months after Ms. Liu’s appeal was rejected, demanding that they return the cash they had confiscated. The police claimed that they hadn’t received her verdict and said they would respond to her once they got a copy.

Two days later, Ms. Liu’s sister received a notice from the Guizhou Province No.1 Women’s Prison that she had been admitted on December 23. The local justice bureau continued to deny her family visits, claiming that only her immediate family, meaning her parents and children, could see her, knowing full well that Ms. Liu had never married and her father had passed away.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Ding Yi (丁毅), head of Qianxi City Domestic Security Office: [phone]Xu Jian (徐健), judge, Bijie City Intermediate Court: [phone]Zeng Qi (曾琪), judge, Qixingguan District Court: [phone], [phone]Li Fengju (李凤菊), prosecutor, Qixingguan District Procuratorate

(More perpetrators’ information is available in the original Chinese article.)