Falun Gong Practitioner Secretly Sentenced with Fabricated Evidence

(Minghui.org) A man in Zhaodong City, Heilongjiang Province was secretly sentenced to prison without legal representation, for practicing Falun Gong, which has been persecuted in China since July 1999.

Mr. Liu Chengzhi was arrested on January 15, 2022 when he was traveling in Harbin City in the same province. After holding him at the Harbin Railway Police Station for eight hours, the police gave him a 15-day detention to be served at home. They threatened to arrest him again if he failed to answer their call during that time.

Mr. Liu’s local police seized him from his home in Changwu Town on the morning of March 10, 2022 and detained him at the Zhaodong City Detention Center. The guards there tortured and humiliated him for eight months. The Anda City Court later sentenced him to a ten-month prison term with a 3,000-yuan fine.

The following is Mr. Liu’s own account of his persecution.

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An officer visited me at home on March 9, 2022 and summoned me to the police station to answer a few questions. The next morning at 6 a.m., four officers charged into my home. My wife, who was just discharged from the hospital after having a severe illness, my elderly mother, and young child were awakened, and terrified.

I asked the lead officer for his ID, name, and title. He told me that his name was Xiao Jianguo, the deputy director of Changwu Town Police Station. I refused to go with him as I had done nothing wrong.

Xiao called in six more officers to handcuff me and put me in a police vehicle. Xiao hit and shook the handcuffs to cause pain in my wrists. The officers also ransacked my home, and confiscated a copy of Zhuan Falun, the book of Falun Gong’s main teachings, several Falun Gong flyers, three cell phones, and cash.

After taking me to the police station, I was handcuffed to a metal chair and deprived of bathroom use for nine hours. The handcuffs were so tight that my hands became numb. Two mid-aged men with their faces covered by hats and facial masks came in. One of them took out a recorder while the other asked how long I had been practicing Falun Gong. Knowing that they were about to record me and use the answers against me, I asked them who they were. One of them said that his name was Wang Lijun, and the other didn’t respond. I later learned that Wang was with the 610 Office.

I refused to answer any of their questions. Wang said that I had committed a crime and violated Article 300 of the Criminal Law for “sabotaging law enforcement with a cult organization.” They even brought my family over, trying to have them persuade me into pleading guilty.

They took me to a lockup that day. Seven days later on March 17, Wang came to take me to a hospital for a physical examination in preparation for formal detention.

In the afternoon Wang tried to collect my fingerprints, but I refused to cooperate. Wang called in seven officers in their 20s to hold me down, and handcuffed me behind my back. They propped me up and pulled me backward to a fingerprinting machine. In the end they collected nine fingerprints from me and gave up on the last finger because it was broken. In the process my wrists bled from the tight handcuffs which cut into my flesh, and my hands turned purple for the lack of blood circulation. Afterward they forcibly collected my blood sample without my consent.

I was taken to an interrogation room and handcuffed to a chair. A policewoman came in and gave me an injection. She said it was a vaccine, and they didn’t have the privilege to receive the shot themselves. Wang came in and ordered me to sign the criminal detention notice. I refused.

I was transferred to a detention center in the afternoon. Because I refused to put on the inmate’s uniform, a guard named Gao Wenqi cuffed me to a chair and repeatedly slapped me in the face until I yelled for help. Gao then handcuffed and shackled me, which were connected by a steel chain.

Gao put me in a cell and told the detainees to “take good care” of me. Four detainees came up to me, one pulled the metal chain on my handcuffs and walked me in the cell in circles, while the others kicked me from behind and punched my back. I could feel my spine cracking when they punched me so hard, and my ankles started to bleed from the heavy shackles.

Whenever I meditated on my bed, they pushed me to the ground. They also punched me if I refused to follow the guard’s orders. My nose and ears bled as a result.

A month later the officer who handled my case told me that I was officially arrested. The prosecutor Yang Guang of the Anda City Procuratorate deposed me twice through virtual meetings. I refused to sign the deposition. Yang recommended sentencing me to eight months with a 3,000 yuan fine because I refused to admit guilt.

The Anda City Court held a virtual hearing on my case on August 2, 2022. The presiding judge, Yan Mingnv, claimed that they had the virtual hearing due to pandemic restrictions, but the lockdown had long since been lifted and the court was having in-person hearings for other cases. The court also failed to inform my family of the hearings. I also had no legal representation. I refused to sign the hearing minutes.

The judge held another virtual hearing ten days later, which lasted only 15 minutes. The judge claimed that they received new evidence against me and would add two months to the eight-month term suggested by the prosecutor.

A third virtual hearing was held a few days later. The things confiscated by the Harbin police back in January were presented as new evidence against me. The quality of the call was very poor and I couldn’t hearing what the judges said.

After one of the judges finished talking, they adjusted the equipment, and asked if I could hear him then. I replied that I heard him clearly, and he said that he was done speaking. I suddenly realized that I had just been tricked into acknowledging what he said.

As I was charged of “sabotaging law enforcement with a cult organization,” I questioned the presiding judge Yan as to which law enforcement I had sabotaged. She pounded the gavel many times and screamed for me to stop talking, “You have no right to ask questions of the court. The session is now adjourned and the sentence will be announced at another time.”

An officer brought the hearing minutes to the detention center for me to sign on November 1. I read it carefully, and found that the things I said had been completely altered. I did not sign.

Three days later another officer came and asked me to sign the minutes again, and I again refused. He started to curse and insult my mother. I wrote on the back of the minutes, “The statement could not be further away from the truth, and I do not agree.” I was later sentenced to ten months.