(Minghui.org) Three Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province residents’ appeals against the wrongful sentences for their faith in Falun Gong were rejected by a local appeals court after a video hearing.
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.
Mr. Liu Qiusheng, Mr. Yu Songsi and Ms. Fang Pinglan were arrested on July 2, 2019. They were sentenced by the Yongxiu County Court on July 28, 2020, after one year of detention.
Mr. Liu was sentenced to five years with 20,000 yuan fine.Mr. Yu was sentenced to two years and six months.Ms. Fang was sentenced to one year and six months with 5,000 yuan fine.
The practitioners appealed with Jiujiang City Intermediate Court, which held a video hearing on November 9. Despite that Mr. Liu had entrusted lawyers Huang Hanzhong and Xie Yanyi to represent him in the appeal case on October 29, the court didn’t inform his lawyers or his family of the hearing.
Mr. Liu refused to sign the hearing record. He said, “Is this considered a hearing? I am being wronged.”
Mr. Liu, 54, a former statistics analyst, has been arrested and detained several times since the onset of the persecution. When he was arrested in July 2000 for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, his mother was dealt such a heavy blow that she suffered a stroke and passed away. Yet the police refused to allow him to attend her funeral.
Mr. Liu was arrested again in 2005 and given one and a half years at Majialong Forced Labor Camp, where he was subjected to different kinds of torture.
Mr. Liu was arrested and held in a detention center for two weeks in the second half of 2010. He was beaten and two of his ribs were broken.
To avoid further persecution, Mr. Liu was forced into displacement in 2011. He slept in the wild, begged for food and did all kinds of odd jobs to support himself. Unable to find him, the police constantly harassed his teenage son and wife, who later divorced him due to the pressure.
Mr. Liu was arrested again on January 13, 2014, for talking to people about Falun Gong. He was sentenced to three years and ten months at Yuzhang Prison.
During his imprisonment, his workplace suspended his pension and fired him.
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