(Minghui.org) A Dalian City, Liaoning Province resident was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison and fined 3,000 yuan for spreading information about his faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Liu Xiaoxiong, 33, a software engineer, was arrested on July 25, 2018 after being deceived by the police into going to their office to apply for a temporary residence permit. The police targeted him for posting Falun Gong-related information on popular Chinese social media platforms, including WeChat and QQ.
Mr. Liu was secretly tried on Monday, May 20, 2019, by Judge Jin Hua of the Ganjingzi District Court, who took over the case from a previously assigned judge on Friday (May 17, 2019). Jin made no mention of the court date when Mr. Liu's family met with her that Friday.
Upon discovering the secret court hearing, Mr. Liu's family filed a complaint against Judge Jin. They couldn't believe that she had kept them in the dark and that she would hold a hearing so soon – on her second day of working on the case. They demanded that the court investigate her failure to inform them and their lawyer of the hearing.
While his family never heard back from the court, Mr. Liu received the guilty verdict on July 8, 2019. He has appealed to the Dalian City Intermediate Court against the sentence.
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