(Minghui.org) A Falun Gong practitioner was recently made to stand trial despite her weak physical condition. The presiding judge insisted that she was pretending to be ill and refused to give her a break. He didn't adjourn the hearing until four hours later.
Ms. Gao Cuifang, from Kunming, Yunnan Province, was arrested for putting up posters with the message “Falun Dafa is good” in a village in Xundian County on April 29, 2018.
Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a spiritual and meditation discipline persecuted by the communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Gao has been detained at Kunming Detention Center since her arrest. The guards refused to allow her family to send her any daily necessities or money for her to buy things she needed. Lacking enough food and bearing tremendous distress from the persecution, Ms. Gao became emotionally unstable and developed inflammation and weakness in her limbs.
She almost fainted shortly after she appeared in Xundian County Court on August 10. However, Judge Zhang Yunjiang refused to reschedule the hearing to allow Ms. Gao to recuperate.
At her lawyer's repeated requests, Zhang summoned a doctor to examine Ms. Gao. The doctor alleged that Ms. Gao was faking her illness, and Zhang signaled for the hearing to continue.
The prosecutor saw that three villagers saw Ms. Gao putting up posters, but he refused to call his witnesses to appear in court to accept cross-examination. Ms. Gao's lawyer then requested to review the video recorded by police when questioning the witnesses. Zhang adjourned the hearing so the lawyer could review the video.
The lawyer saw in the video that the witnesses were looking at the officers in confusion while the officers quickly filled up the interview record. According to insiders, officer Li Wenhua went around the village to try to find out who put up the posters and eventually recruited three illiterate people to be prosecution witnesses.
Judge Zhang originally told Ms. Gao's lawyer that eight of her family members were allowed to attend the trial, but on the day of the trial he decided to keep her father and sisters outside the courtroom. Only her husband, mother, and two children were allowed to go inside.
