[Minghui Net] In broad daylight, the Jingmen Court held a closed-door trial of a young intellectual who kept practicing Falun Gong. The news was blocked from the public so as not to arouse public's ridicule.

Meng Xianglong is a young, intellectual worker from the Bureau of Land Tax Services in Jingmeng City, Hubei province. On December 1999, he was suddenly arrested from his home. The reason was that Li Qingxia and some other female practitioners from Jingmeng City went to the national appealing office to appeal. Afterwards, they were illegally detained and sexually harassed by the policemen. Later on, they were detained in the Jingmen Second Detention Center. Li Qingxia and her fellow practitioners wrote an appeal letter and asked their family members to pass it on to Meng Xianglong. They had hoped Meng Xianghong could publicize this letter which described the whole process they had gone through while being detained in the detention center. Out of his good conscience, Meng Xianglong posted the letter entitled "An Appealing in Prison" on the Internet. He was, therefore, arrested. Under the pressure from various aspects, Meng Xianglong admitted he was guilty (against his conscience) and wrote an article criticizing Falun Gong at the beginning of 2000. After that he was released. On September 2000, he was then forced to attend a "Transformation Class" held by the 610 Office of Jingmen City. [610 Office is an office created by the government to deal specifically with issues related to Falun Gong] In the class, he refused to take the lead in exposing and criticizing Falun Gong and was, thus, arrested again in his home during the night on September 27, 2000. After nearly four-months of illegal detention, he was sentenced to five years in prison during a closed-door trial held by the Dongbao District Count, Jingmen City. Except for the judges and prosecutors in charge of the case, no other relevant people were allowed to be on the trial, not even Meng Xianglong's family members or supervisors from his workplace. The court also turned down the request of a journalist who wanted to sit in on the hearings. A week after his trial, Meng Xianglong's family got the court decision by word of mouth. This situation illustrates how the officers involved in this case were afraid of being exposed when they put an innocent, kind-hearted practitioner on trial.

According to insiders, Meng Xianglong's case was political. The closed-door trial came from the order of the high authorities. The outcome of the trial as well as the degree of his punishment all came from the instruction of higher authorities and not from the court, which had no right to make the decision at all. None of the judges, prosecutors, lawyers, or law researchers could explain the case clearly from the standpoint of the law. It's hard to believe that such terrible treading of the law that was widely used by the "Gang of Four" during the Great Cultural Revolution has happened again. But should the people's basic right be deprived at will?

Written by a practitioner from China in January 2001

February 15, 2001