(Minghui.org) A Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province, resident was sentenced to one year on December 26, 2023, for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Li Shuang’s sentencing stemmed from her arrest on September 14, 2023. The arrest was in turn triggered by an incident on September 6, 2023, when she took her ailing 86-year-old father to Dr. Wang Hongfei’s clinic. While waiting for their turn, Ms. Li talked to an elderly woman about how Falun Gong cured her breast issues after she began practicing it in 2009.
The woman’s son reported Ms. Li to the police. Several officers came and attempted to take her away. She said no one would take care of her father if she were arrested. The police ordered her to call someone else to the clinic to take care of her father. When she refused to comply, the police urged Dr. Wang to examine her father quickly. Dr. Wang said the elderly man was very ill and recommended he be examined further at a hospital.
The officers followed Ms. Li as she drove her father to the Yichun Central Hospital and back to their shared home after he was examined. They searched the home and left only to return the next day and order Ms. Li to sign the list of confiscated items. She told the police that she needed to go out to hire a aide to care for her father. The police let her go and left her home temporarily. Ms. Li did not return to avoid being arrested.
Ms. Li’s father was so terrified by the police that his condition quickly worsened. He died on September 11, 2023. After his funeral on September 13, Ms. Li bought a plane ticket to leave the country to avoid being arrested. She was arrested while going through customs at the Beijing Airport on September 14. The Yimei Domestic Security Office and the Xicheng Police Station in Yichun City picked her up in Beijing three days later.
The Youhao District Procuratorate indicted her at an unknown date and the Youhao District Court sentenced her on December 26, 2023. The details of her trial remain unknown.
This is not the first time that Ms. Li has been targeted for her faith. She was previously arrested on August 23, 2012, for distributing Falun Gong informational materials and given 15 days of detention at the Wumahe Detention Center. On the 13th day, the police took her to a brainwashing center, where she was held for an unknown amount of time.
Ms. Li’s next arrest took place in Shanghai on April 2, 2015, when she was visiting her father, who lived in Shanghai at the time. The Jinshan District Court in Shanghai sentenced her to three and a half years on December 28, 2016. She served time at the Shanghai Women’s Prison.