71-Year-Old Woman Secretly Sentenced to Four Years for Her Faith, Having Previously Suffered a Total of Eight Years of Unlawful Imprisonment

(Minghui.org) For a year after Ms. Zhang Jun was arrested for her faith in Falun Gong, the police kept her family in the dark of her whereabouts and case status. It wasn’t until April 2024 that the police informed her family that she had been secretly sentenced to four years. The reason that the police finally contacted Ms. Zhang’s loved ones was to collect the 20,000 yuan court fine she was ordered to pay. Infuriated by the arbitrary detention and secret sentencing, her family refused to pay.

Ms. Zhang, a 71-year-old Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, resident, was arrested at home by officers of the Acheng District Domestic Security Division on May 23, 2023. The police refused to tell the family where she was detained. Due to her family’s poor financial condition, they couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer to seek justice for her.

Ms. Zhang’s family visited her at the Heilongjiang Province Women’s Prison on June 3, 2024. It’s not clear when she was transferred there. Because she refused to renounce Falun Gong, the prison authorities only allowed her family to visit her once every three months.

Past Persecution

Ms. Zhang took up Falun Gong in 1997. In just one week, her many health conditions, including heart and kidney problems, were all gone. After the Chinese communist regime ordered the persecution in 1999, she was twice given forced labor terms totaling four years and once sentenced to four years in prison.

Ms. Zhang went to Beijing to demonstrate a banner in Tiananmen Square in October 2000. She was beaten by the police and then released. Only days later, she returned to Tiananmen Square to demonstrate again. Two officers of the Shengli Police Station escorted her back to Harbin and detained her at the Acheng District Second Detention Center for 15 days.

Ms. Zhang went to Beijing to appeal for the third time in early 2001, only to be reported to the police in a hotel near the Beijing East Train Station. Officers Li and Wang of the Ashihe Police Station escorted her back to Harbin and again detained her at the Acheng District Second Detention Center. Because she shouted “Falun Dafa is good” in protest, the police beat and verbally abused her. After 55 days of detention, she was given one year at the Wanjia Forced Labor Camp.

On January 31, 2003, only one month after Ms. Zhang was released, six officers of the Shengli Police Station arrested her at home and took her to the Acheng District Detention Center. When the police failed to find Falun Gong related materials in her home, they colluded with Zhou Bingshi, the former director of Acheng Grain Depot where Ms. Zhang worked at, to fabricate testimony that Ms. Zhang gave him Falun Gong booklets and DVDs. Ms. Zhang was given a three-year labor camp term as a result.

Ms. Zhang was distributing Falun Gong materials with another practitioner Ms. Gao Yulan on March 12, 2016, when they were arrested by Yang Ziheng, the deputy director of Acheng District Domestic Security Division, and Wang Yuntang, the Xiaoling Police Station. The Acheng District Court held a hearing of their case on June 30, 2016 and announced the verdicts on August 5 that year: Ms. Zhang was sentenced to four years and Ms. Gao three years with three years probation.