(Minghui.org) A Zhongning County, Ningxia Province resident was recently taken to Shizuishan Prison to serve a term of six years and four months for practicing Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Mr. Sun Jianfeng, 48, was distributing Falun Gong informational materials in a residential area on December 31, 2018, when a security guard saw him and reported him to police. Several officers soon arrived. They body searched him and ransacked his home. Two of his Falun Gong books were confiscated. Mr. Sun was then taken to Zhongning County Detention Center.

The police submitted his case to Shapotou District Procuratorate in mid-March 2019. The prosecutor returned it twice before accepting it and indicting him in late July 2019.

Mr. Sun was tried by the Shapotou District Court on January 7, 2020, and sentenced to six years and four months on January 15. He was first taken to the Ningxia Prison Entry Education Center and then transferred to Shizuishan Prison less than a month later.

Past Persecution

Mr. Sun used to work at the power station of Lanzhou Railroad Bureau. For refusing to renounce his faith, he was repeatedly arrested and incarcerated for a total of 8.5 years in the past two decades.

Shortly after the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999, he was arrested and tortured in Zhongning County Detention Center.

When he went to Beijing to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong in October 2000, he was arrested and given 1.5 years of forced labor, with the term extended for another six months.

Shortly after he was released, he was arrested again for putting up posters about Falun Gong and given another three years of forced labor in 2002.

After he returned home in 2005, his workplace monitored his daily life for nearly two years because he refused to renounce Falun Gong.

The authorities took him to the Gongjiawan Brainwashing Center in January 2007, where he was force-fed food and unknown drugs, made to freeze in the snow, and held in solitary confinement for more than 50 days with his hands cuffed behind his back. The guards once hung him up by the wrists, with his feet barely touching the ground, for 72 days.

Torture illustration: Hung up

Mr. Sun was arrested again in March 2012 and sentenced to 5.5 years. The prison guards beat and verbally abused him at will. They also deprived him of sleep and forced him to sit on a small stool for long hours without moving.

By the time he was released in September 2017, he only had ten teeth left and couldn’t chew any food. His hair became grey. He was emaciated and had injuries on his back.

Mr. Sun filed an administrative complaint with Xingqing District Court in May 2018, demanding that Yinchuan Prison stop persecuting Falun Gong and compensate him for his dental injuries and mental trauma. He also demanded to hold prison guards Hu Jianqiao, Lu Wei and Duan Mingliang accountable for torturing him.

The Yinchuan City Intermediate Court held a hearing of his case on August 15, 2018. Instead of seeing justice being served, Mr. Sun was arrested again more than a month later and detained for 13 days.