(Minghui.org) It was recently learned that a 55-year-old resident of Qingdao City, Shandong Province, had been sentenced to seven years for his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Mr. Jiang Chunlin was arrested at home on May 9, 2023. His bedridden wife was so terrified by the police raid that she died ten days later. She was 53.
The police initially submitted Mr. Jiang’s case to the Laoshan District Procuratorate on June 9, 2023, and prosecutor Zhou Bojian soon issued a formal arrest warrant for Mr. Jiang. Two months later on August 16, the Laoshan District Police Department moved the case to the Shibei District Procuratorate for an unknown reason.
Prosecutor Zhang Xiuyan indicted Mr. Jiang around October 2023. It is unclear when he stood trial at the Shibei District Court. His family only found out that judge Li Jianjun sentenced him to seven years (exact date unknown) and he was subsequently admitted to the Jinan Prison.
Mr. Jiang’s mother-in-law in her 80s was outraged that he was jailed simply for living by Falun Gong principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be a good person. She said that her daughter had a stroke in 2017 and became paralyzed and lost her speech. It was Mr. Jiang who took meticulous care of her day in and day out in the next six years. The trauma from witnessing her husband’s arrest claimed her life days later. The police, however, refused to release Mr. Jiang on bail to tend to his wife’s funeral.
Details of Arrest
Mr. Jiang was helping out at his son’s restaurant on the morning of May 9, 2023, when three officers from Budong Police Station in the Laoshan District showed up. After one of them flashed his police ID, they arrested him and confiscated his iPhone (which was a gift from his son) before going to his home. They later returned the SIM card in the phone but not the phone itself. They confiscated from his home a printer, a computer, some Falun Gong books, and his personal notebook with experiences and understanding of Falun Gong cultivation.
Mr. Jiang’s wife became disabled and couldn’t speak after she had a stroke in 2017. She could only lay in bed helplessly, watching the police rummage through her home. Her son had to remind the officers to be quiet so as to not traumatize her.
The police said that Mr. Jiang was their key target and that they had been monitoring him for more than six months. They made the arrest after a surveillance video captured a backpack-wearing man who looked like Mr. Jiang in a particular neighborhood, so they suspected him of distributing informational materials about Falun Gong there.
The footage only showed the man’s back, not his face, but the police still used it as evidence to have Mr. Jiang admitted to a detention center the next day.
His wife, who had relied on him for care since her stroke, died ten days after his arrest. Their son worried that Mr. Jiang might not be able to take the news well and didn’t tell him about it through his lawyer until about a month later. His son had not been allowed to visit him, so his lawyer relayed the news while visiting him in the detention center.
Mr. Jiang said to the lawyer, “My wife was indirectly persecuted to death by the communist regime.” The police denied his son’s request to have him released on bail to tend to his wife’s funeral.
Related Report:
Bedridden Woman Terrified by Police Raid Targeting Husband, Dies Ten Days Later
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