(Minghui.org) A 72-year-old resident of Deyang City, Sichuan Province was jailed between April 25 and July 24, 2024 for his faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Mr. Chen Hanshou’s ordeal stemmed from his arrest by two plainclothes officers on May 12, 2022, while he was talking to people about Falun Gong at a local farmers’ market.
The police took Mr. Chen to the Donghu Police Station for interrogation. In the meantime, another group of officers deceived his daughter into opening the door and raided their shared residence. The police confiscated several charm amulets bearing the messages “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” Before leaving, they had Mr. Chen’s daughter sign his “released on bail” notice. Their colleagues in the police station then released Mr. Chen that afternoon.
The Jingyang District Procuratorate notified Mr. Chen in July 2022 that he was facing charges of violating Article 300 of the Criminal Law, which states that anyone using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They told him to hire a lawyer.
Mr. Chen wrote a complaint against the two arresting officers instead of hiring a lawyer. He accused them of not wearing uniforms while arresting him, of raiding his home without notifying him or showing a search warrant, and of failing to give him a list of the confiscated items. He argued that they had committed the crime of home robbery.
The procuratorate, however, refused to accept the complaint. They referred Mr. Chen to the district discipline committee, which in turn referred him to the inspectorate within the Donghu Police Station. The last agency accepted the complaint, but replied two weeks later that it had no jurisdiction over the matter.
Mr. Chen then tried the procuratorate again. The agency initially still refused to accept the complaint, but relented after Mr. Chen showed them Article 110 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which states that procuratorates and courts shall accept reported cases and accusations and transfer them to the appropriate agencies if the cases are not within their own jurisdiction.
The procuratorate though did not issue an acknowledgment of the receipt of the complaint as required by law.
The two arresting officers summoned Mr. Chen to the Donghu Police Station in August 2022 and proposed to leave him alone if he dropped the complaint against them. As a Falun Gong practitioner, Mr. Chen did not file the complaint to seek revenge against them, but to clarify the facts about Falun Gong. So he agreed to drop his complaint and thought the case against him was also over.
The police, however, still sought Mr. Chen’s prosecution and alleged that they confiscated 171 copies of Falun Gong materials from his home. The Jingyang District Procuratorate proceeded to indict him in July 2023. He then submitted his complaint against the two arresting officers to the Jingyang District Court, along with his defense statement.
Not long afterwards, an officer from the Donghu Police Station called Mr. Chen to say that the court had put him under six-month house arrest. There was no written records of the house arrest notice. The Jingyang District Justice Bureau also called him and demanded to know who wrote his defense statement for him.
Mr. Chen stood trial on September 26, 2023. His wife, Ms. Xiao Yifeng, had already sat down for the hearing, when judge Han Jian ordered her to leave the courtroom. Han said the open trial had now become a secret trial with no spectators allowed.
During the two-hour-long hearing, Mr. Chen was not allowed to talk at all, while the prosecutor spent one and a half hours reading the indictment and other materials. Judge Han only asked Mr. Chen to submit his statement in writing.
Mr. Chen and his wife were returning from outside at around 10:30 a.m. on April 25, 2024 when they heard footsteps behind them. They turned to see two plainclothes officers and one security guard. The trio followed the couple to their apartment building and then whipped out a piece of paper saying it was an arrest warrant issued by the Jingyang District Court. They held Mr. Chen down and handcuffed him. Ms. Xiao yelled, “The police are arresting good people!” Many residents came out to see the commotion and one plainclothes officer ordered them to leave.
Ms. Xiao went to the court at 3 p.m. on May 7, 2024 to submit her request to represent her husband as a non-lawyer defender. Judge Han refused to accept the request and accused her of being a suspect in the case. He said he’d simply announce the verdict tomorrow, and he indeed sentenced Mr. Chen to three months the next day (May 8). Mr. Chen was released on July 24.
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