(Minghui.org) Mr. Gong Qinglin, a 67-year-old Yilong County, Sichuan Province resident, received a call from the police on March 7, 2019 and was asked to go to the police station for an ID registration. Suspecting that the police were trying to persecute Mr. Gong for his faith in Falun Gong, his family asked him not to go. Mr. Gong still went, only to be arrested right away.
The police snatched Mr. Gong’s home key and brought him back for home-ransacking. His Falun Gong books, computer, printer, as well as 80,000 yuan in cash, were confiscated.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
The police interrogated Mr. Gong several times and said they would release him if he agreed to provide information on six to eight Falun Gong practitioners. He refused to comply and was kept in custody.
The police later submitted his case to the Procuratorate, accusing him of “using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement,” the standard pretext used to frame Falun Gong practitioners. The Falun Gong related items confiscated from him were included as prosecution evidence.
Worrying about his situation, Mr. Gong’s family hired a lawyer to represent him. When the lawyer went to the Yilong County Procuratorate to review his case documents, the staff member there said that someone else had borrowed the documents, and that they didn’t have an electronic file available.
When the lawyer went to the Procuratorate’s Supervision Office to file a complaint about the staff blocking him from reviewing the case documents, it took more than an hour for the supervision office to agree to accept his complaint.
Mr. Gong was tried on October 20, 2020 and sentenced to a four-year prison term.
