(Minghui.org) A Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, resident was sentenced to 10 months and fined 3,000 yuan on June 15, 2023, for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since July 1999.
Ms. Chu Zhanjuan, a retired teacher from the Daqing No. 4 Middle School, lives in the High-Tech Industry Development Zone of Daqing City. She was arrested on June 7, 2022 and later released on a one-year bail. Her ID was confiscated and she was ordered to not go out of town during her bail period.
During her bail period, the police harassed Ms. Chu multiple times, including one incident at home on July 12, 2022. Ms. Chu was summoned to the police station on August 13, 2022, to have a talk with several so-called “experts” from the central government and the Heilongjiang Province Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extrajudicial agency tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong.
Five officers from the High-Tech Industry Development Zone Domestic Security Office raided her home on September 7, 2022, confiscating many of her personal belongings.
The High-Tech Industry Development Zone Domestic Security Office took Ms. Chu back into custody on May 10, 2023 and held her at the Daqing City Second Detention Center.
Ms. Chu appeared in the High-Tech Industry Development Zone Court on June 15, 2023. Her lawyer defended her innocence in practicing and spreading information about Falun Gong. He emphasized that no enacted law in China has ever criminalized Falun Gong and that the ban on Falun Gong publications had long been lifted in 2011.
Judge Yan Guanhua (+86-17804598230) sentenced Ms. Chu to 10 months with a 3,000-yuan fine at the end of the trial. She has filed an appeal.
This is not the first time that Ms. Chu has been targeted for her faith. She was arrested on November 5, 2015 for filing a criminal complaint against former CCP head Jiang Zemin for ordering the persecution of Falun Gong. She was held at a local detention center for 15 days.
The communist regime launched a “Zero-out” campaign across the country, aimed to force every Falun Gong practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith. As such, her school harassed her numerous times from October to December 2020. The local police and street committee also harassed her twice at her school. Her school principal and seven other administrators once surrounded her and delivered a threat from higher-up that she’d be “severely punished” if she refused to give up her belief. They urged her to be “smart,” but Ms. Chu held firm to her faith.
In May 2021, several officers searched Ms. Chu’s home computer using the excuse that they had discovered that she was surfing overseas websites, including Minghui.org.
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