(Minghui.org) A 60-year-old woman in Kunming City, Yunnan Province, was sentenced to three and a half years and subsequently lost her appeal. Her family wasn’t notified of her trial or the result of her appeal.
Ms. Bi Jinmei, a former freshwater aquaculture engineer at the Songming County Water Bureau in Kunming City, was at home at around 7 p.m. on January 11, 2025, when a group of officers from the Chuanjin Road Police Station broke in and raided her home. They revealed that they had spotted her raising awareness of the communist regime’s persecution of Falun Gong earlier that day.
The police put Ms. Bi in the Kunming City Detention Center and kept her family in the dark regarding her case status. They only recently found out that she had been sentenced to prison by the Xishan District Court and that her appeal was denied by an intermediate court. They still do not know when she was indicted, tried, or sentenced. They are also not sure if she has been admitted to prison.
This is not the first time that Ms. Bi has been targeted for practicing Falun Gong. She was arrested at work on January 5, 2006 and given two years of forced labor at the Yunnan Province Women’s Labor Camp. After she was released, her employer lowered her pay grade by four notches.
Ms. Bi was arrested again on August 16, 2014, while distributing Falun Gong materials in neighboring Xundian County with three other practitioners, including Mr. Wang Zhengli (deputy director at the Songming County Water Bureau), Ms. Wang Juzhuen, and Ms. Li Xiaoling. Ms. Wang and Ms. Li were both elementary school teachers.
The Xundian County Court later sentenced all four of them to prison. Ms. Bi, Mr. Wang, and Ms. Wang were each given seven and a half years. Ms. Li received three years with four years probation.
Ms. Bi served time at the Yunnan Province Second Women’s Prison. Her husband divorced her while she was in custody. On her scheduled day of release, February 16, 2022, the Songming County 610 Office and Songyang Police Station showed up at the prison and ordered her to go with them to process some paperwork in Songming County. Her family had no alternative but to leave her sister’s phone number so they could bring her home.
The police called Ms. Bi’s sister twice, in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Three people from the Songyang County Justice Bureau suddenly broke into the sister’s home on April 9, 2024 to harass her. They forced her to reveal her brother’s phone number and home address.
The Songming County Police Department later harassed Ms. Bi’s sister at least one more time. In August 2024 they tracked down Ms. Bi and harassed her at a temporary rental place that she and her mother shared. The Songyang Police Station followed up by calling her to confirm her address. Officers Li Jiahe and Guan Jingwen from the Wenlin Police Station in Kunming showed up on September 10, 2024 in the name of registering residents. Another group of officers harassed her in November 2024.
Related Report:Four Practitioners Facing Illegal Trial for Distributing Falun Gong Literature
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