(Minghui.org) A Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province resident is facing trial for his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

Mr. Li Kai was arrested on December 16, 2020, for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong at a local market. The police ransacked his home and confiscated his Falun Gong books, materials, laptop, ID, apartment deed, and household registration form.

The police soon took Mr. Li to the Jinzhou City Detention Center but did not notify his family of his detention. When the Linghai City Procuratorate approved his arrest on December 29, his family didn’t receive any official notifications either.

When Mr. Li’s lawyer visited him on December 28, he told the lawyer that someone from the local procuratorate had come to talk to him three days ago. He also noted that he was having pain in his liver and had been found to have Hepatitis B, which had been cured after he took up Falun Gong but recurred due to the poor living conditions in the detention center.

On February 23, 2021, the police formally submitted Mr. Li’s case to the Linghai City Procuratorate, which has been assigned to handle most Falun Gong cases in Jinzhou to speed up the prosecution process.

Mr. Li’s lawyer went to the procuratorate on March 4 and reviewed his case document, in preparation for his legal defense.

On March 5, the lawyer visited Mr. Li for the second time at the detention center. Mr. Li said he also began to have high blood pressure, in addition to his liver and spleen issues. He told the lawyer that a different person from the procuratorate had tried to pressure him into pleading guilty in late February and threatened to indict him when he refused to comply.

Around 2 p.m. on March 5, Mr. Li’s lawyer submitted his legal opinion to the procuratorate, urging them not to indict Mr. Li. A staff member surnamed Li said the prosecutor assigned to the case, Zhou Lili, wasn’t in office, but he would give it to her when she came back.

Only five minutes after the lawyer left, the procuratorate called him and said they had already indicted Mr. Li that morning and forwarded his case to the Linghai City Court.

The lawyer suspected that the prosecutor had deliberately hid her intention to indict Mr. Li when he went to review his case document the day before, and also specifically waited after he had left to tell him that they had already indicted his client.

This wasn’t the first time that Mr. Li has been persecuted for his faith, which he credits for curing his hepatitis and helping him quit gambling. Since 1999, he has been arrested several times and was also fired by the Huaguang Power Group where he worked. He was given two labor camp terms for a total of three years and then sentenced to four years following another arrest in April 2015.

During his prison term, his 84-year-old mother passed away in agony after living with tremendous mental pressure for years from the persecution. She could not see Mr. Li for the last time.