Three Yunnan Residents Sentenced for Practicing Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) Three Kunming City, Yunnan Province, residents were recently sentenced to prison for their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Ms. Zhang Xiaohua, a 67-year-old Kunming native, was sentenced to 3.5 years. Ms. Li Ping, a native of Heilongjiang Province in her 60s, was given 3 years and 2 months. Mr. Tian Yunbo, a 51-year-old Kunming native, received 3 years.

Ms. Zhang was arrested on August 16, 2021, while visiting another practitioner. The police searched her and took her to the Mouliu Police Station, before ransacking her home. 

Ms. Li and Mr. Tian were arrested around the same time. 

Without the practitioners revealing their identities, officers from the Guandu District Domestic Security Office knew who they were and said out loud their names, an indication the police had likely monitored them for some time. 

At 7 p.m., led by the local police, five plainclothes officers ransacked the home of Ms. Li’s daughter. They took away two decoration pendants on the door, the daughter’s hat and a jacket. The police didn’t record the raid with their body-cam as required by the law. Instead, one plainclothes officer videotaped the scene with his cellphone. The police didn’t provide a list of confiscated items either.

The police put all three practitioners on criminal detention the next day, with the charge of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners. Ms. Zhang and Ms. Li were held at the Kunming City Detention Center. Mr. Tian was kept at the Guandu District Detention Center. 

After the police submitted the practitioners’ case to the Wuhua District Procuratorate, Ms. Zhang’s family urged prosecutor Zhang Kun to dismiss their case. They said that Ms. Zhang didn’t violate any law by visiting a friend. While she did have Falun Gong books at home, that didn’t violate the law either. And the books couldn’t show how she had allegedly undermined law enforcement. 

Despite the family’s appeal, the prosecutor still approved the practitioners’ arrests and indicted them. They were tried by the Wuhua District Court through a virtual hearing on January 19, 2022, and recently sentenced. 

Prior to their latest sentencing, Ms. Li had previously been sentenced to two years; Mr. Tian was given a two-year labor camp term and sentenced to 18 months in July 2005. Ms. Zhang has also been sentenced before, but the length of the term isn’t clear.

Perpetrators’ contact information:
Zhang Kun (章锟), prosecutor of Wuhua District Procuratorate: [phone]Chen Weida (陈伟达), prosecutor’s assistantZhang Yun (张赟), judge of Wuhua District Court: [phone]

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