(Minghui.org) More than three months have passed since Ms. Lin Jianping requested a hearing of her appeal, but she still has not had a response from her local appeals court.
Ms. Lin of Yantai City, Shandong Province, was arrested on February 6, 2022, for refusing to give up her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999. She was released the same day after the local detention center declined to admit her due to her poor health. She has since remained out on bail.
Ms. Lin was tried on December 19, 2022. She was sentenced to three years and fined 5,000 yuan on March 28, 2023. She filed an appeal with the Yantai City Intermediate Court, which assigned the case to judges Wu Guoyan (+86-535-6675306), Gai Boxian (+86-13361398889), and Wu Jing.
Judge Wu Guoyan deposed Ms. Lin on June 16, 2023. While signing her name on the deposition, she also wrote, “My sentence was a major injustice. I request a public hearing to redress the injustice in accordance with the law.” Wu commended her on her neat handwriting and Ms. Lin said, “The court should be a place to uphold justice and I of course must be serious and write my statement neatly.”
Wu, however, has never told Ms. Lin or her non-lawyer defender whether a hearing would be held.
On July 5, 2023, Ms. Lin and her defender submitted a legal opinion to the Qixia City Procuratorate, which was responsible for her indictment. The document requested that the wrong done to Ms. Lin be redressed. The clerk who received them listened carefully and recorded their conversation in a notebook. She said she’d report Ms. Lin’s concerns to the higher-ups and ask what the procuratorate could do.
Ms. Lin’s defender asked the clerk to pass the legal opinion to the officials in charge and the Public Prosecution Division of the procuratorate.
Ms. Lin and her defender next went to the Qixia City Police Department, which carried out her arrest, and submitted the same legal opinion to its Appeals Division. An officer took the legal opinion and went to ask for directions from higher-ups. He came back to say, “Even if we did wrong, we can’t correct our own mistakes.”
On July 27, 2023, officer Sui Shuliang from the Appeals Division of the Qixia City Police Department called Ms. Lin’s defender and asked if he had submitted Ms. Lin’s legal opinion to them. Ms. Lin’s defender confirmed that he had. He and Ms. Lin learned later that Sui was the second-in-command of the Domestic Security Office of the Qixia City Police Department.
Sui said Ms. Lin’s case was no longer with the police department, implying that they were no longer responsible for her situation.
Ms. Lin’s defender reminded Sui that the police department started everything because they’d arrested her and submitted her case to the procuratorate without any legal basis, which resulted in her wrongful conviction. The defender also emphasized that no enacted law in China criminalizes Falun Gong or labels it as a cult. so Ms. Lin’s practice of and spreading information about Falun Gong was totally lawful.
Someone from the Qixia City Court called Ms. Lin the next day to summon her to the courthouse. She asked why, but the caller refused to tell her. Ms. Lin then asked to speak to judge Han Liguang (+86-18596132061), who’d sentenced her. The caller obliged and passed the phone to Han.
Ms. Lin asked why she was being summoned, and Han said it was about her appeal. Ms. Lin reminded him that her case now rested with the intermediate court and that he could talk to her defender if he had any questions about the appeal.
Not long after the phone call, judge Han showed up at Ms. Lin’s door along with another judge and two female court workers. They rang the doorbell but Ms. Lin didn’t open up, and they left.
Past Persecution
This is not the first time that Ms. Lin has been targeted for her faith. She previously served three years in a forced labor camp and another three years in prison. She was brutally tortured while she was incarcerated.
With Ms. Lin’s latest appeals case still pending, her daughter has a hard time sleeping at night, worried her mother could again be thrown into jail and tortured. She is also worried that her father’s heart disease might relapse if he can’t cope with her mother’s situation anymore. The younger woman can’t focus on her work and doesn’t dare to try for a child, worried that her anxiety about her mother might affect the baby’s health.
Related reports:
Shandong Woman Appeals Three-year Wrongful Sentence for Raising Awareness about Falun Gong
Shandong Woman Refutes Wrongful Charge Against Her for Her Faith in Falun Gong
Kindhearted Woman Faces Prosecution Again for Her Faith
Shandong Woman’s Personal Account Reveals Beatings, Injections, and Torture in Prison
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