(Minghui.org) The Lianshan District Court in Huludao City, Liaoning Province, secretly sentenced a local woman to one year on November 14, 2023 without telling her family or lawyer.
Ms. Li Minghua’s loved ones did not find out about the prison sentence until June 14, 2024, when they went to the Huludao City Detention Center to deliver clothes for her. She was no longer there and the guards said she was transferred to the Liaoning Province Second Women’s Prison after judge Wang Lianting sentenced her in November 2023.
Ms. Li, a 71-year-old kindergarten owner, was arrested on July 11, 2023 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. Her lawyer called the Nanpiao District Procuratorate to ask which prosecutor issued her formal arrest warrant. The staff refused to reveal the prosecutor’s name and claimed that the case was still resting with the arresting police agency in Nanpiao District.
When they found out she was secretly sentenced, Ms. Li’s family and lawyer realized that Lianshan District was handling her case, not the Nanpiao District. They still do not know when she was indicted or tried, or whether a court-appointed lawyer represented her when her own lawyer was not notified of her trial.
Ms. Li taught at a private school in Dawopu Village, Nanpiao District for five years before opening her own kindergarten around 2013. She used to suffer from migraine headaches and leg pain. She couldn’t lift her arms, much less do any housework. Her symptoms disappeared in less than six months after she took up Falun Gong in 2011. She was able to do household chores again and help take care of her grandchild. Her daughter-in-law said she was a great mother-in-law.
Her latest arrest took place on July 11, 2023, while she was going through security checks at the North Railway Station in Huludao City before boarding an 11:50 a.m. train to Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, to visit her pregnant daughter.
The railway police searched Ms. Li and found paper currency printed with Falun Gong messages and called in officers from the Jitun Police Station in Nanpiao District. They kept her at the railway station and proceeded to raid her home with the house key they took from her. They confiscated more than 50 Falun Gong books and over 100 pieces of paper currency imprinted with Falun Gong messages.
Since the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, all legal channels to appeal were blocked. Practitioners have to use creative ways to raise awareness of the persecution, including printing messages on paper currency.
The railway police sent Ms. Li home that evening. When she asked for her Falun Gong books, the officer said the Jitun Police Station had them.
Ms. Li went to the Jitun Police Station the next day to ask for her books. The police arrested her and kept her in custody.
Ms. Li’s daughter-in-law went to the police station to seek her release. She told the officer in charge of her case, “My mother-in-law is already 70 years old. Please release her!” The officer responded that their police station once detained an 89-year-old resident. He also bragged how they arrested four other local Falun Gong practitioners on August 19, 2022, and got three of them sentenced to prison.
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