(Minghui.org) A former real estate executive has been taken to the Yunnan Province No.2 Women’s Prison to serve a three-year sentence for her faith in Falun Gong. This is the second time that Ms. Xiang Dong has been sentenced in six years.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
A group of officers broke into Ms. Xiang’s home in Kunming (the capital city of Yunnan Province) on March 1, 2021, after she was reported for practicing Falun Gong.
The police first confiscated her Falun Gong books and other personal belongings. Then they waited outside of her home and arrested her when she returned at around 8 p.m.
She was first interrogated at the Fuhaixiang Police Station and then taken to the Kunming City Detention Center. The Xishan District Domestic Security Office submitted her case to the Xishan District Procuratorate. The Xishan District Court then sentenced her to three years in prison.
Taking Up Falun Gong
Ms. Xiang, in her 40s, had always been interested in spiritual aspiration and often explored the meaning of life. When she was introduced to Falun Gong in 2011, she was drawn to the principles discussed in the books and began to practice it.
Practicing Falun Gong improved her health and also turned her from a demanding person to someone who is caring and considerate. Her tense family relationship became very harmonious as well.
First Prison Sentence
Having benefitted so much from practicing Falun Gong, Ms. Xiang began to speak up for it in her spare time.
She was reported for distributing informational materials about Falun Gong on January 24, 2016 and arrested. The police brought her home in handcuffs the next day to ransack her place. Only after her husband protested about the handcuffs did they remove them.
Mr. Xiang’s husband told the police that his wife is a good person and didn’t do anything wrong in practicing her faith. The police questioned whether he practiced Falun Gong himself and threatened to arrest him. He told them that he was a Muslim.
The police confiscated Ms. Xiang’s computer, printer, copy paper and Falun Gong materials. No list of items was provided. Her husband was also taken to the police station for interrogation. When he insisted that Ms. Xiang didn’t do anything wrong, the police said to him that they found 278 copies of materials and 4 DVDs, which were enough to build a case against her.
The Xishan District Court held a hearing of Ms. Xiang’s case on September 13, 2016. She was accused of undermining law enforcement, the standard pretext used to frame Falun Gong practitioners. She maintained that she has the freedom of belief and didn’t violate any law in practicing Falun Gong, let alone undermine law enforcement.
Her lawyer, Mr. Guo, entered a not guilty plea for her. He argued that the prosecution evidence presented by the prosecutor only demonstrated that his client is a Falun Gong practitioner and failed to support the charges against her. He said that his client’s faith is protected by the China's constitution and that it’s her basic right.
The lawyer added that it’s illegal for the police to break into his client’s home and arbitrarily search it. It's the police who violated the law.
In the final statement, Ms. Xiang urged the judges and prosecutors to follow their consciences, and to not become scapegoats in the communist regime’s persecution of innocent people.
The judge still sentenced Ms. Xiang to one year.
Encounter in the Detention Center
At the local detention center, Ms. Xiang still took opportunities to clarify the facts about Falun Gong to other detainees. She met a woman in her 50s whose two granddaughters both had intellectual disability, with the older girl almost entirely mute.
After learning about Falun Gong, the woman recited the auspicious phrases “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good” every day and asked for help with her mute granddaughter. One day she said to Ms. Xiang with great excitement that her granddaughter began to talk and it saved the family over 200,000 yuan compared to visiting a doctor.
Perpetrator’s contact information:
Ma Mingjun (马铭钧), officer of Fuhaixiang Police Station: +86-13888968991
All content published on this website are copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
