(Minghui.org) Three Dongying City, Shandong Province residents were illegally convicted on May 26, 2025 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Wang Fan, 50, was sentenced to four years. Her husband, Mr. Du Jianxin, 51, and Mr. Fu Jian, around 47, both received three and a half years. All three practitioners decided to appeal the verdicts.
Arrests
The three practitioners were arrested on November 29, 2023, during a police sweep of local Falun Gong practitioners. According to an insider, the mass arrest was ordered by the Dongying City Police Department and the Binhai Police Department. Prior to the arrests, the police monitored practitioners for a month, including installing tracking devices on their cars and arranging agents to follow and photograph them.
The police submitted the cases against Mr. Du, Ms. Wang, and Mr. Fu to the Dongying District Procuratorate in Dongying City. The three practitioners were indicted at an unknown date.
Mr. Du’s mother was so distraught by her son’s and daughter-in-law’s arrests that she passed away in May 2024. The couple’s family hired a lawyer to represent them. The Binhai Detention Center barred the lawyer from visiting his clients and told him he had to get approval from the Dongying City Police Department first. The police claimed that they could not grant any meetings because they were in the process of interrogating the couple and gathering prosecution evidence. In fact, the police never went to the detention center to question the couple. Ms. Wang went on a hunger strike in protest and was force-fed.
Four Hearings Preceding Wrongful Convictions
The Dongying District Court in Dongying City held the first hearing of the three practitioners’ cases on July 3, 2024. Presiding judge Liu Nan did not allow the practitioners or their lawyers to present defense statements. During the second and the third hearings on October 16 and 21, she allowed the defense statements to be presented. The lawyers entered not guilty pleas for their clients.
One key piece of prosecution evidence presented by prosecutor Wang Shasha (+86-18661396357) were the interrogation records concerning another local Falun Gong practitioner, Ms. Liu Chunrong, a retired water company employee. Ms. Liu was also arrested on November 29, 2023. Although she was released at 10 p.m. that night, she was arrested again one week later, on December 7 and taken to the Jishu Brainwashing Center, where she was abused to the point of developing a mental disorder in five days. The police then had her sign many documents, including blank pieces of paper.
Prosecutor Wang alleged that these interrogation records stated that Ms. Liu “ratted out” Mr. Fu, Mr. Du, and his wife and that what Ms. Liu “confessed” was sufficient evidence that the three practitioners on trial broke the law.
The three practitioners and their lawyers, who learned about Ms. Liu’s abuse from an insider, challenged the prosecutor to show videos of Ms. Liu being abused and that she was coerced into signing the documents when she had no mental clarity. The prosecutor did not play any videos or address the question of how such illegally-gathered “evidence” against the three practitioners could be admissible in the trial.
Judge Liu held a fourth hearing on May 19, 2025. The three practitioners and their lawyers again demanded their acquittal, but they were all sentenced one week later.
The three practitioners remain at the Binhai Detention Center at the time of this report. All three have been previously targeted for their faith.
Past Persecution
Mr. Du and Ms. Wang used to work at the Longkou Offshore Oil Shipping Company, with the former being a sailor and the latter was a translator handling documents written in Russian. Since the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, the couple has been repeatedly arrested. Ms. Wang was sentenced to 3.5 years on June 5, 2002 and was given a 3-year labor camp term in 2008. The authorities extended her labor camp term by another 3 years because she refused to renounce Falun Gong. Mr. Du was held in brainwashing centers multiple times and was sentenced to 10 years following his arrest in January 2011.
Mr. Fu, a veteran, worked at the Juneng Thermal Power Plant in Shouguang City (also in Shandong Province) and won “Employee of the Year” many times. He was previously arrested at 8 a.m. on April 15, 2013, while taking his company’s bus to work. He was held at a brainwashing center and restrained in a metal chair with his hands cuffed and feet shackled for 30 straight days. His legs and feet became swollen and he had difficulty walking after he was released from the chair. He went on a hunger strike for five days and became emaciated. His teeth were loose and his hair fell out due to the continued abuse in detention. After he was released from the brainwashing center, he went into hiding and later moved to Dongying City, about 60 miles from Shouguang.
Related Reports:
Dongying City, Shandong Province: 18 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrested in One Day
Young Couple from Shandong Province Suffer Years of Severe Persecution
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