(Minghui.org) The arrest and subsequent conviction of a Zibo City, Shandong Province resident for her faith in Falun Gong have angered locals who regard her as an upstanding citizen and a generous neighbor.
To control the situation, authorities used various means to try to stop the news of her prosecution from further spreading. Several agents even stormed her home in the middle of the night to intimidate her family.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. It has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Jiang Yuqin, 66, lives in Hebin Residential Complex in Zhangdian District, Zibo City. She never hesitates to help anyone in need. She even paid a plumber out of her own pocket to fix a serious sewage problem in the complex. Her fellow residents were so moved that they wrote Hebin Neighborhood Committee to request an award for her good deeds.
The committee director, Li Cheng, met with Ms. Jiang. She declined the reward and explained that her practice of Falun Gong taught her to be considerate of others and that she didn't want anything in return.
Li thanked her for being a good neighbor, but he later reported her to Zhangdian government, which had ordered him to keep watch on Falun Gong practitioners in his jurisdiction prior to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, which was held in Qingdao (about 165 miles from Zibo City) on June 9-10, 2018.
More than two dozen officers descended on Ms. Jiang's home and arrested her on May 29, 2018. Many Falun Gong practitioners living in nearby cities around Qingdao were also harassed and arrested prior to the summit as the authorities attempted to prevent them from traveling to Qingdao to appeal for their faith.
During Ms. Jiang's detention, many of her neighbors wrote letters to Zhangdian District Procuratorate and Zhangdian District Court. They testified that she was of good character and had made many contributions to their community. They demanded her release on the grounds that she should not have been prosecuted for her faith. Some neighbors also delivered meals to her loved ones.
The neighborhood committee director, Li, who reported Ms. Jiang, expressed his regrets. He submitted an affidavit in support of her to the court and pleaded for her release.
With Minghui's reporting on her case, many Falun Gong practitioners outside of China also made phone calls to authorities in Zibo to demand her release.
Local government officials became upset upon learning of the publicity Ms. Jiang's case had attracted. They ordered police to break into her family's home in the middle of the night and threaten them not to leak any information to the outside.
The procuratorate and the court conducted an investigation and concluded that Ms. Jiang was indeed a good person who had not broken any laws. But they expressed that they had no say when it came to Falun Gong matters.
Judge Guo Jian, who is in charge of the case, said to a relative of Ms. Jiang, “There is nothing I can do. Although I am the presiding judge, what I say doesn't count. Everything is decided by my superiors. I have to follow their orders. Not only this time—they decide all Falun Gong cases. I've never had any power to make my own decisions in these instances.”
Ms. Jiang was sentenced to one year in October 2018, and she has recently begun to serve time at Shandong Province Women's Prison.