(Minghui.org) It was recently confirmed that a 66-year-old Kunming City, Yunnan Province resident has been sentenced to three years and fined 5,000 yuan for his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Mr. Ran Chunhui is currently held in Division 10 of the Yunnan Province First Prison. He developed a slipped disc and hernia in detention and it’s unclear whether he has received any medical attention.
The sentencing of Mr. Ran, a retired manager of a railroad construction company, stemmed from his arrest on May 30, 2022. Someone knocked on his door that day, claiming to be from their building's property management. His wife, Ms. Hu Qiongfen, around 63 and a retired employee of the Yunnan Province Railroad Bureau, opened the door, only to have eight officers barge in. The person from property management then left.
The officers spent over two hours searching the couple’s home, without showing their IDs or revealing where they came from. They confiscated 30 Falun Gong books, 19 DVDs containing Falun Gong information, and 14 Falun Gong lecture audiotapes, as well as the couple’s laptop and cellphones. The police later returned Ms. Hu’s phone, but not Mr. Ran’s.
During the raid, the police revealed that they had been monitoring Mr. Ran for the past two months, after a driver reported finding a Falun Gong brochure in his pickup truck bed on April 5, 2022. The police also showed a photo of a person wearing a black down jacket walking on the street near the pickup truck and claimed it was Mr. Ran.
Ms. Hu confirmed that the person in the photo was her husband, but she argued that the police could by no means infer from the photo alone that her husband was the one who placed the Falun Gong brochure in the pickup truck bed.
The police were unable to provide concrete evidence to support their claim and an officer blurted out, “The court is the evidence!”
The police next took the couple to the Xiaobanqiao Police Station in unmarked cars. They released Ms. Hu hours later but kept Mr. Ran in custody.
Ms. Hu was notified the next day that her husband was detained on charges of “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used against Falun Gong practitioners. He was taken to the Xundian Detention Center and was officially arrested on June 15, 2022. No family visits were allowed.
The Wuhua District Court sentenced Mr. Ran in 2023 based on the police-supplied evidence, including the photo showing him walking on the street and the Falun Gong-related items confiscated from his home. His wife was listed as a witness against him after being deceived into providing information about his Falun Gong activities during the police interrogation. Other details of Mr. Ran’s indictment, trial, and sentencing remain to be investigated.
Prior to Mr. Ran’s latest arrest, the Kunming City Social Security Bureau suspended his monthly 5,700-yuan pension as of November 2021. They claimed that because he was sentenced to three years with five years’ probation in 2013 for practicing Falun Gong, he had to return the pension received during that time, totaling more than 200,000 yuan, as a new policy ruled that he wasn’t entitled to any retirement benefits while serving time (even though the Chinese labor law doesn’t have such a stipulation). The Social Security Bureau has been suspending Mr. Ran’s monthly pension benefits to pay back the payments he received earlier.
Related Report:
65-year-old Man Detained for a Month for His Faith, Wife Interrogated by Police
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