(Minghui.org) Two sisters in Jinzhou City, Liaoning Province are facing trial for their faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.

A group of plainclothes officers broke into Ms. Bai Shaoping’s home on April 26, 2020. Both Ms. Bai and her younger sister, Ms. Bai Shaojie, were studying the Falun Gong teachings when the police came. The police confiscated their Falun Gong books and took the sisters and Ms. Bai Shaojie’s five-year-old granddaughter to the Beijiao Police Station. The sisters were forced to sign statements to renounce Falun Gong against their will and were released on bail at around 9 p.m.

Upon returning home, Ms. Bai Shaojie’s five-year-old granddaughter often woke up crying at night. As the little girl's parents have divorced and her father works out of town, she lives with and relies on her grandmother for care. 

On February 8, 2021, four days before the Chinese New Year, the Linghai City Procuratorate called the two sisters and summoned them to the procuratorate. The call and the possible prison sentence of his wife left Ms. Bai Shaoping’s husband so terrified that he became incontinent. The police also threatened to arrest Ms. Bai Shaoping’s daughter if they couldn’t find her mother, leaving the two families to spend their holiday in fear and distress.

On February 19, one week after the Chinese New Year, the prosecutor called Ms. Bai Shaojie’s son and told him to urge his mother and aunt to go to the procuratorate to answer some questions. The sisters went there on March 1 and were told that they have been indicted. 

Ms. Bai Shaojie told the prosecutors, Wang Tian and Li Yuchong, that she used to suffer double pyelonephritis (severe kidney infection) when she was 28. The condition was life-threatening and there was no effective cure at the time. But shortly after she took up Falun Gong, her condition disappeared and she has remained healthy since. She said that no law has ever criminalized Falun Gong in China and she refused to plead guilty for practicing her faith. 

The prosecutors transferred the sisters’ case to the Linghai City Court on March 8. In the evening, the police told the sisters’ families to bring them to the police station the next morning. Ms. Bai Shaojie went there, only to be arrested on the spot and taken to the Jinzhou City Women’s Detention Center. It’s not clear whether Ms. Bai Shaoping has been taken back into custody. 

Since Yao Guomin became the head of Jinzhou City Political and Legal Affairs Committee, an extra-judiciary agency tasked with persecuting Falun Gong, in October 2018, he has assigned the Linghai City Procuratorate and Linghai City Court to handle all Falun Gong cases in the Jinzhou region. The consolidation has not only speeded up the prosecution process against local practitioners, it has also resulted in lengthier prison terms for practitioners. 

Just for talking to people about Falun Gong, Mr. Liu Wansheng, 65, was sentenced to six years in September 2020, five months following his arrest at a bus station. His prosecution dealt a heavy blow to his father, in his 80s, who soon passed away in deep anguish.