(Minghui.org) [Hefei City, Anhui Province] A centenarian went to the Shushan District Court with her granddaughter to appeal to Judge Ni Na for the release of her 80-year-old daughter Ms. Gao Zonghua on January 21, 2019. The 100-year-old woman was turned away by the judge and told further information would be provided by the end of the month.
Three days later, the court sentenced Ms. Gao Zonghua to one year in prison and fined her two thousand yuan.
The family was hoping for Ms. Gao's return home for Chinese New Year. Her mother was grieved over not being able to celebrate the traditional holiday with her daughter.
Arrest and Trial in Court
Ms. Gao Zonghua went to Jindatang in Hefei City to tell people about the persecution of Falun Dafa in March 2018. A plainclothes police officer reported her. The police found Falun Dafa amulets on her. She managed to escape from the Shengli Road Police Station and went home during the night.
The police ransacked her home the next day and seized a Dafa book. The Shengli Road Police Station submitted fake documentation about Ms. Gao to the Shushan District Procuratorate on April 25, 2018. She was indicted and put under house arrest on July 20, 2018.
The court set a trial date on October 25, 2018, but Ms. Gao was nowhere to be found on the eve of the trial. Ms. Gao had been taken into custody by the police. She was tried on November 15, 2018, without announcement of a verdict.
The family tried to keep Ms. Gao's mother from learning of her arrest. Eventually, they had no choice but to tell her, as she was used to being visited by Ms. Gao once a week.
Ms. Gao Zonghua was illegally sentenced to seven years in prison in 2010 and mistreated in custody for refusing to renounce Falun Gong.
With support from friends and relatives, Ms. Gao's mother hired an attorney from Beijing to defend Ms. Gao. The attorney was sympathetic and in awe of the need for the centenarian to hire him to defend the constitutional right of an eighty-year-old woman.
