(Minghui.org) A 61-year-old Qixia City, Shandong Province resident is appealing a three-year sentence for speaking up for her faith in Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Lin Jianping was arrested right outside the Qixia City Police Department on February 6, 2022, for talking to an officer about Falun Gong. After the Mouping Detention Center refused to admit her due to her health, Ms. Lin was released that same day and put on six months of residential surveillance. The Qixia City Procuratorate on October 21 charged her with “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong in China.
Ms. Lin stood trial at the Qixia City Court on December 19, 2022. She called out the prosecutor for wrongfully indicting her and the police for fabricating evidence against her.
She was notified by the court on March 28, 2023 to pick up her verdict on the next day. She went there the next morning and was handed a three-year sentence with a 5,000-yuan fine.
Ms. Lin noted that the verdict indicated that she talked to the police about Falun Gong, but there were no details about what she said, such as the lack of legal basis for the persecution or Falun Gong not being on any cult list. Before she was sentenced, she kept asking the police, the prosecutor, and the judge to provide the legal basis for prosecuting her, but none of them ever did so. The judge also failed to mention that no witnesses appeared in court to accept cross-examination, and that no officers signed the certificate that allegedly authenticated the prosecution evidence.
In her appeal, Ms. Lin demanded that the higher court investigate how the police interrogated her and fabricated information in her deposition, including answers she never provided and the drug test she never underwent.
She emphasized again that the persecution had no legal basis from the beginning. The two arguments she made were that no Chinese law or government agencies ever identified Falun Gong as a cult, and that the General Administration of Press and Publication had lifted the ban on Falun Gong books in 2011.
Han Liguang (韩立广), presiding judge: +86-18596132061Liu Yonghua (刘永华), judgeWu Dejiang (吴德江), judgeZhang Hongyan (张洪艳), court clerk
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