(Minghui.org) An 85-year-old retired teacher was informed on July 2, 2021 that she has been sentenced to three years and fined 10,000 yuan, for “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used by the Chinese Communist Party to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Han Guiyun, a resident of Yingkou City, Liaoning Province, was arrested in a park on May 31, 2019, after being reported by a person named Wang Shugong for talking to others about Falun Gong. The police ransacked her home without her knowledge. After holding her in the local police station all day, they called her son to take her home at around 1 a.m. Ms. Han was taken back to the police station on June 18, 2019, and ordered to sign her bail release document.
The police later submitted her case to the Zhanqian District Procuratorate, which then indicted her and moved her case to the Zhanqian District Court.
During her trial in the Zhanqian District Court on March 10, 2021, Ms. Han testified in her own defense. She argued that there is no law in China that says that practicing Falun Gong is a crime and that the Chinese publication bureau revoked the ban on publishing Falun Gong literature in 2011.
When the police took Ms. Han for a physical exam after the hearing, she had dangerously high blood pressure and vomited. The local detention center refused to accept her and she was released again.
A police officer and two people from the residential committee harassed Ms. Han on March 12. They said that if she agreed to sign a statement promising not to practice Falun Gong anymore, they would give her a light sentence and she would still receive 60% of her pension. They threatened that if she refused to comply, they would suspend her entire pension. Ms. Han said she wouldn’t sign such a statement and they left. It remains to be seen whether the authorities have suspended her pension.
The police made another attempt to detain Ms. Han in late April. She was denied admission by the detention center again due to her high blood pressure, a condition she has been struggling with in the past year due to constant harassment by the police.
Judge Wang Feng convicted Ms. Han on June 3 and delivered the verdict to her on July 2. The “evidence” used against her included the fact that she had been practicing Falun Gong since 1996 and that she possessed Falun Gong materials at home. The judge ordered her to pay the fine within ten days after receiving the verdict. He is also to issue a separate notice as to when she would start serving time.
Others who are responsible for Ms. Han’s case are judges You Changli and Yu Huasheng, clerk Suo Lili, as well as prosecutors Ji Lu and Jiang Peng.