(Minghui.org) A 59-year-old resident of Changchun City, Jilin Province, was admitted to the Gongzhuling City Prison on May 14, 2024, after losing his appeal protesting a six-year sentence for his faith in Falun Gong.
Mr. Shi Wenzhuo was arrested on March 16, 2023, and taken to the Xinglongshan Detention Center in Changchun City. The Kuancheng District Court tried him secretly on August 11 and again around December 2023. His family was never notified. He was sentenced to six years on December 19, 2023.
Mr. Shi filed an appeal with the Changchun City Intermediate Court, which assigned a docket number to the case on February 6, 2024. Judge Wang Qingsong was tasked with presiding over the case the next day. He called Mr. Wang’s family on March 20 to say that there would not be an open hearing.
Around March 26, 2024, two Changchun City Procuratorate officials talked to Mr. Shi in the detention center. It is not clear whether they went there at the behest of appeals judge Wang. It was soon learned that Wang had ruled to uphold Mr. Shi’s wrongful conviction. Judges Fan Wenhao (+86-431-88556649, +86-17643108213) and Zhang Ge and clerk He Jialin also signed the ruling. Mr. Shi was transferred to prison on May 14.
Prior to his latest sentencing, Mr. Shi was given one year of forced labor in 2000 and twice sentenced to prison (to nine years in 2002 and four years in 2012).
Details of Latest Persecution
Mr. Shi was arrested and his home was raided by two Tumenling Police Station officers on the afternoon of March 16, 2023. They confiscated one Falun Gong book and a portrait of Falun Gong’s founder.
Six other officers went to the property management office at Mr. Shi’s apartment complex earlier that day (at 7 a.m.), demanding to see surveillance videos. They decided to arrest him when they saw him taking out the trash in a video.
The two arresting officers drove Mr. Shi straight to the Xinglongshan Detention Center in Changchun City, but the detention center refused to admit him after he failed the required physical exam. The police demanded that he be examined again, but the results showed he was still in poor health.
The police next went to a hospital and had a doctor alter Mr. Shi’s exam results. The detention center then agreed to accept him. The guards interrogated him, forced him to drink alcohol, and hung him up with ropes.
The Kuancheng District Procuratorate indicted Mr. Shi and forwarded his case to the Kuancheng District Court. He stood trial on August 11, 2023. The court did not notify his family of the hearing beforehand and only told them about it after it was over. The court later held a second hearing and again did not notify Mr. Shi’s family.
According to insiders, judge Li Dan presided over the trial. Also present were judges Cao Yangzi and Liu Xiaona, as well as clerk Wang Xiaoxu. Li promised to sentence Mr. Shi to only two years if he admitted “guilt.” If he refused, he would get three years or more. He did not comply with the demand since he broke no law in practicing Falun Gong.
The court delivered a guilty verdict to Mr. Shi on December 19, 2023. He was sentenced to six years. He wrote on the verdict, “The ruling against me is invalid.”
Related Reports:
Twice Jailed for a Total of 13 Years, Jilin Man Again Faces Trial for His Faith
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