Software Engineer and His Fiancée Sentenced to Prison for Their Shared Faith in Falun Gong
(Minghui.org) A software engineer and his fiancée in Shanghai were sentenced to prison on June 12, 2023, to six and five years, respectively, for their shared faith in Falun Gong.
After 20 months of detention, Mr. He Binggang has become bedridden as his injury from previous detention relapsed, while Ms. Zhang Yibo has had an abnormal lump growing on her chest.
Mr. He Binggang
Ms. Zhang Yibo
Mr. He was arrested at home on October 9, 2021, after the police broke in when he opened the door for a delivery worker. His tablet and cell phone were confiscated.
At the same time, another group broke into Ms. Zhang’s home. She locked the door from inside, but the police pried open the lock and broke in. Her computer, tablet, and cellphone were also confiscated.
The police denied Mr. He’s lawyer from visiting him at the Changning District Detention Center, with the excuse that his case endangered national security. Not until March 10, 2022, about one month after the police submitted their cases to the Changning District Procuratorate on February 15, was his lawyer finally allowed to talk to him on the phone at the detention center, without seeing him in person.
The prosecutor indicted both practitioners on March 15, 2022, and the Fengxian District Court, one of the courts in Shanghai designated to sentence Falun Gong practitioners, accepted their cases on June 10, 2022.
Mr. He suffers from declining health since his arrest. His neck issue and partial paralysis, which resulted from torture during a previous detention, worsened. He has now completely lost the ability to walk and has become bedridden. He has trouble falling asleep at night and suffers from constant dizziness, headache, and incontinence.
It’s not clear whether the court held a hearing of the two practitioners’ cases before sentencing them.
Prior to their latest arrests, both practitioners have been targeted before for not renouncing their faith.
Ms. Zhang, a 46-year-old former business manager at a foreign company in Shanghai, was sentenced to 1.5 years by the Xuhui District Court in 2009.
Mr. He, also 46, was expelled by Fudan University in 2000 and sentenced to six years in 2001 by the same Xuhui District Court. He started a technology company after being released in 2007, only to be arrested again in April 2010. Even though he became paralyzed due to injuries to his spine as a result of being tortured, the Changning District Court still sentenced him to five years in April 2011.
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