(Minghui.org) A 56-year-old former teacher has been imprisoned to serve a four-year term for her faith in Falun Gong after her appeal was rejected by a local appeals court.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual and meditation discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Ms. Zhao Chenyu, a Kunming City, Yunnan Province resident, was arrested on August 27, 2018, shortly after she returned home from visiting her mother in her hometown of Jinghong City in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province.
The police in Jinghong City traveled over 300 miles to Kunming to arrest Ms. Zhao. Together with the Kunming police, they ransacked Ms. Zhao’s home and confiscated many of her personal belongings, including her Falun Gong books, 3 computers, 2 printers, 17 cellphones, 43 chargers, 35 cellphone batteries, 11 card readers, 57 flash-drives, 18 SD cards, some clothes and thousands of yuan in cash.
Around the same time, another group of officers in Jinghong ransacked the homes of Ms. Zhao’s mother and son. Ms. Zhao’s mother, Ms. Meng Yunying, was given 15 days of detention and fined 1,000 yuan. Due to her advanced age, the police didn’t detain her. However, the mental pressure of the police harassment took a toll on the elderly woman’s health. She fell at home and hurt her femur. She was hospitalized and passed away on November 16, 2019.
The police in Jinghong submitted Ms. Zhao’s case to the Mengla County Procuratorate. She was accused of distributing Falun Gong materials in a residential area and charged with “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used by the Chinese authorities to frame and imprison Falun Gong practitioners. The police also provided footage recorded by a surveillance camera of a woman distributing the materials that they claimed to be Ms. Zhao.
Ms. Zhao first appeared in the Mengla County Court on February 27, 2019. The judge adjourned the hearing after her lawyer argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the charge.
During Ms. Zhao’s second court appearance on July 26, 2019, the prosecutor added a dozen people to the witness list, including Ms. Zhao’s family members, who confirmed that she practices Falun Gong and that they have received Falun Gong materials from her. The prosecutor also accused Ms. Zhao of being a repeat offender, as she had been sentenced for practicing Falun Gong before.
The lawyer argued that no law has criminalized Falun Gong in China and that neither Ms. Zhao’s practicing Falun Gong nor her possessing or distributing Falun Gong informational materials showed how she has committed any crime or hurt anyone.
Ms. Zhao denied the charges against her and insisted that she didn’t do anything wrong in practicing Falun Gong and telling people about it.
The judge sentenced her to four years, with a 40,000-yuan fine.
Ms. Zhao appealed the verdict, but the intermediate court upheld her sentence on March 25, 2020. She is now serving time at the Yunnan Province No. 2 Women’s Prison.
Prior to Ms. Zhao’s latest ordeal, she was sentenced to three years in 2006 for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. Her employer, Kunming City 30th Middle School, fired her during her imprisonment. Her husband, a police officer, divorced her. Her son, who was deprived of his mother's care, became a delinquent. His maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather lived in fear, and both of them passed away while his mother was in prison.
Related report:
Once Imprisoned for Three Years, Former Teacher Again Faces Indictment For Her Faith
