The Courts in Guangzhou City Sentence Five Well-Respected Members of Society So Far This Year, More Than 100 Since 1999 (Photos)
(Clearwisdom.net) Since the communist regime began to openly persecute Falun Gong in July 1999, Guangzhou City courts in Guangdong Province have illegally sentenced more than a hundred Falun Gong practitioners. In 2011 alone at least five practitioners have been the victims of injustice simply for practicing Falun Gong. These five practitioners are all well-respected members of society, including an entrepreneur, a lawyer, a piano teacher, and a company vice president.
Entrepreneur and Her Three Family Members Still in Custody
At 9:00 a.m. on July 15, 2011, Tianhe District Court in Guangzhou City tried Ms. Wang Haihong, who had been detained for nearly a year. Only her mother and husband were allowed to audit the trial. She had difficulty walking on her own due to being abused in the Tianhe District Detention Center.
Ms. Wang Haihong
Ms. Wang 44, is an entrepreneur and lives in Jinan Garden in the Tianhe District of Guangzhou City. Local police broke into the residence of her elder brother, Mr. Wang Zhihong, the evening of August 21, 2010, and arrested him, their mother, and her youngest brother, Mr. Wang Zhiqiang. Arrested at the same time were Mr. Wang Zhigang and his wife, neither of whom were Falun Gong practitioners. The police confiscated Dafa books, four laptops, one handheld device, and other personal belongings. More than 700 miles away, Ms. Wang’s younger sister, Ms. Wang Haiying, was seized in Luoyang City, Henan Province, that same day.
Mr. Wang Zhigang and his wife were released the next night.
A few days later, on August 27, an unidentified person called Ms. Wang, who was a People’s Representative for Guangzhou, informing her to attend a People’s Representatives’ Conference in the Huangpu District. Believing what she was told, Ms. Wang went. She failed to return home that night. Her family later learned that she was being held in the Tianhe District 610 Office. The police ransacked her business. The 13 letters she wrote to the city officials to clarify the facts, her computer, and other belongings were confiscated.
Ms. Wang’s brother, Mr. Wang Zhiqiang, and their mother were sentenced to one year and nine months of forced labor. The three siblings—Ms. Wang Haihong, Mr. Wang Zhihong, and Ms. Wang Haiying—were later served formal arrest warrants (after their illegal arrests). Their mother was freed shortly afterwards.
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Lawyer Sentenced Again; His Elderly Mother Condemns the Court for Bringing Shame on the Legal System
The afternoon of July 13, 2011, Haizhu District Court officials in Guangzhou City held a second trial for Mr. Zhu Yubiao and sentenced him to two years [of incarceration]. His mother, in her 70s, condemned the court for succumbing to the 610 Office orders and bringing shame on the legal system. The presiding judge was rendered speechless.
Zhu Yubiao
This trial was irregular for the following four reasons: First, the trial was delayed for close to three months. Second, the court didn’t notify the family of the trial until 11:30 a.m., just three hours before the trial was scheduled to convene at 2:30 p.m. Third, the court repeatedly denied the defense attorney’s requests to change the trial date and held the trial on a day when he was unavailable. Fourth, only Mr. Zhu’s mother was allowed to attend the trial; everyone else present was a police officer.
When the court tried Mr. Zhu for the first time on May 5, 2011, the local authorities made every effort to prevent his mother from being present. That day, more than a dozen agents from the Zhongda Street Neighborhood Committee and the 610 Office forcibly “invited” the elderly mother to go to a faraway place to “have some tea” with them. They didn’t set her free until the trial was over.
Mr. Zhu’s mother hired two lawyers to defend him. The Lawyers Administration Agency of the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Justice interfered with the first lawyer’s work. Out of concern for the lawyer’s personal safety, Mr. Zhu’s mother let the lawyer go. The second lawyer was illegally detained and denied any communication with Mr. Zhu’s family. When Mr. Zhu’s mother requested that he be her son's legal representative, the court declined, citing that she was a practitioner. Only recently, at his family’s strong and persistent request, was the second lawyer released and able to re-establish communication with and resume legal services for Mr. Zhu’s family.
Mr. Zhu obtained his Master of Law degree at Sun Yat-Sen University. He is a lawyer of strong moral fiber and often defends disadvantaged people, either for very little money or for free. He has received coverage in the media for his kind acts. Between 2005 and 2006, Mr. Zhu defended three Falun Gong practitioners who were subjected to illegal hearings. His defense was so thorough that the court officials appeared stunned. In order to pressure him, officials from the Department of Justice charged him with being a “counter-revolutionary.” Mr. Zhu was arrested on February 11, 2007, at the home of practitioner Mr. Lin Zhiyong in Panyu, Guangzhou, and subsequently held in a forced labor camp for 18 months.
The morning of August 18, 2010 Mr. Zhu was arrested at home. Under pressure from the 610 Office, the local court sentenced him to two years; he is now in the Beijiang Prison in Guangdong Province.
Mr. Zhu has filed an appeal.
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Lawyer Mr. Zhu Yubiao Subjected to Illegal Detention for Five Months
Senior Piano Teacher Arrested for the Ninth Time
Ms. Xu Ming was born in 1956 into a music loving family. Her parents were piano professors at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. Prior to the start of the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, she was a senior piano teacher at Guangdong Teachers College of Foreign Language and Arts. During the past ten plus years she has been arrested, detained, and forced to endure brainwashing sessions numerous times. Her college also fired her and removed her from the classroom.
Ms. Xu Ming
Ms. Xu was distributing truth-clarification materials the morning of April 10, 2011, on Duobao Street in the Liwan District when she was captured. That night, more than a dozen officers from the Duobao Street and Longjin Street Police Stations handcuffed her and escorted her back to her residence. They ransacked her home and looted her personal belongings, including her computer and printer.
Liwan District Court tried Ms. Xu on August 4, 2011.
Former Company Vice President Illegally Sentenced to Five Years
In June 2011, without the knowledge of his family and lawyer, Tianhe District Couet officials sentenced Mr. Xu Zhiyin to five years. He appealed at the trial, requesting an acquittal and unconditional release.
Mr. Xu Zhiyin
Mr. Xu Zhiyin, 44, lives in the Guangdong Province Machinery Institute's residential compound, 663 Tianhe North, Guangzhou. He used to suffer from many illnesses but became completely healthy after he picked up the practice of Falun Gong in 1999. Widely considered to be a very fair person of good character, he was quickly promoted to vice president at a well-known logistics company where he worked.
Tianhe District Domestic Security Division and 610 Office agents captured Mr. Xu the night of May 22, 2010; ransacked his home; and confiscated many valuable personal belongings, including a diamond ring, a jade pendant, and cash. While being held in Tianhe District Detention Center, beginning April 1, 2011, he refused to wear a uniform. The guards shackled him. They didn’t remove the shackles until May 5. He became much skinnier after this month-long torment.
Ten years prior, in 2001, because Mr. Xu clarified the truth about the communist regime’s brutal persecution of Falun Gong, he was sentenced to forced labor for one year. In 2005, he was detained for three months. While in the Sichuan Forced Labor Camp, his persecutors threatened to broil him alive in a brick kiln.
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Ms. Li Guangping, 33, is from Maoming, Guangdong Province. After graduating from college, she landed a job at the China Mobile Zhuhai Branch.
During her practitioner-sister’s detention in the Guangdong Province Legal Education Center between 2006 and 2007, Ms. Li went to visit her sister many times, but always refused to cooperate with the authorities to pressure her sister to give up her belief in Falun Gong. Enraged, Zhuhai 610 Office agents ordered Ms. Li’s employer to refuse to renew her employment contract. This job loss enabled her to see through the barbaric persecution of Falun Gong. Moved by the kindness of Falun Gong practitioners and the wonderfulness of Falun Gong, she also entered the door of Dafa cultivation not long after.
Shortly before the Asian Games in Guangzhou, on the morning of July 23, 2010, a group of police officers broke in her residence and looted her Falun Gong books, Shen Yun Performing Arts DVDs, computer, and other personal belongings. They took her to the Tianhe District Detention Center that same afternoon.
At 2:30 p.m. on April 19, 2011, Tianhe District Court officials tried Ms. Li. She went on a persecution protest hunger strike. Information has it that detention center officials sent her by wheelchair to the Nanfangsan Hospital for force-feeding.