(Minghui.org) A Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, resident appeared in court for the third time on May 1, 2023, for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong. The prosecutor recommended she be sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Ms. Zhang Cuifang, who is in her 60s, was handing out Falun Gong informational materials on August 1, 2022, when she gave a copy to someone who turned out to be an official with the Yuyang District Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-judiciary agency tasked with overseeing the persecution.
Angered by what Ms. Zhang was doing, the man reported her. The police raided Ms. Zhang’s home, confiscating all her Falun Gong books, and several thousand yuan in cash with information about Falun Gong (as a way to raise awareness about the persecution due to strict information censorship in China) printed on the bills.
Terrified by the police violence, Ms. Zhang’s husband, who doesn’t practice Falun Gong, didn’t dare to come home for many days.
Ms. Zhang appeared in the Yuyang District Court on March 9, 2023. She refused to answer any questions and the judge adjourned the proceedings. At her second hearing in late March, the prosecutor presented two witnesses who claimed she gave them Falun Gong brochures.
The judge didn’t inform Ms. Zhang’s family of her third hearing on May 1 as required by law. Seeing no one from her family in the courtroom, Ms. Zhang knew that they must not have been given any advance notice of the hearing. She protested the violation of legal procedure. Only then did the judge inform her nephew, who worked in the courthouse, and her daughter, but neither one was able to take time off work on such short notice. In the end, Ms. Zhang’s husband, who has an intellectual disability due to carbon monoxide poisoning many years ago, was brought in to be the only family member at her hearing.
This isn’t the first time that Ms. Zhang has been targeted for upholding her faith. She was arrested in February 2013 for distributing Falun Gong materials. She was held at the Fugu County Detention Center for five days and had over 2,000 yuan with information about Falun Gong printed on the bills confiscated. Agents from the Fugu County 610 Office raided her home again in 2014 and took her Falun Gong books and informational materials.
Also because she had Falun Gong materials at home, Ms. Zhang was arrested again on July 31, 2017, and sentenced to 1.5 years in late 2017.
Shaanxi Woman Faces Prison Sentence for Distributing Falun Gong Materials