(Minghui.org) A 43-year-old Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province resident was sentenced to a three-year prison term and fined 10,000 yuan on April 6, 2023, for giving out a flyer about Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999.
Mr. Cai Huaxing appealed the sentence on the same day. His lawyer also helped him file complaints against prosecutors and judges for indicting and sentencing him without any legal basis. The complaints were filed with Guangdong Provincial Supervisory Commission, Guangdong Province People’s Congress, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Supreme People’s Court, and the National Supervisory Commission.
The Guangzhou City Intermediate Court ruled on May 29, 2023, to uphold Mr. Cai’s original verdict. He is still waiting to hear back from the above-mentioned five government agencies regarding his complaints against his perpetrators.
Mr. Cai Huaxing
Persecution of Falun Gong One of the Worst Injustices in History
Mr. Cai and his lawyer reiterated the major defense arguments they used in the trial and later included in his appeals case.
Mr. Cai was sentenced for violating Article 300 of the Criminal Law, which states that anyone using a cult organization to undermine law enforcement must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. China’s law-making body, the People’s Congress, has never enacted any law criminalizing Falun Gong or labeling it a cult. As such, there were no legal grounds for the sentencing.
Prosecutor Xiong Yihua of Liwan District Procuratorate had cited as a legal basis a statutory interpretation of Article 300 of the Criminal Law issued by the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in November 1999. The interpretation required that anyone practicing or promoting Falun Gong be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.
Mr. Cai’s lawyer pointed out that a new statutory interpretation that replaced the 1999 version took effect on February 1, 2017. The new interpretation made no mention of Falun Gong and emphasized that any indictment against anyone engaging in a cult must be based on solid legal grounds. Since no enacted law in China labels Falun Gong a cult, the sentencing of Mr. Cai based on the statutory interpretation lacked a legal basis.
The one flyer that Mr. Cai gave out was used as prosecution evidence against him. As his lawyer put it, Mr. Cai’s practice of Falun Gong was simply for keeping fit and improving character, and his distribution of Falun Gong informational materials was to alert people to the CCP’s persecution of law-abiding citizens. The flyer didn’t cause any harm to any individual or society at largest, much less undermine law enforcement.
Prosecutor Xiong cited as a legal basis two notices issued by China’s Administration of Press and Publications in July 1999 to ban the publication of Falun Gong books. Mr. Cai’s lawyer pointed out that the Administration issued a repeal of the ban in 2011 and that it was fully legal for practitioners to own Falun Gong books. As such, the flyer that Mr. Cai distributed should never have been used as admissible evidence to sentence him.
Despite the lack of legal basis and admissible evidence, the judges Li Guowen, Chen Feng, and Yu Youbin of Liwan District Court still sentenced Mr. Cai. The lawyer said the perpetrators were simply following the CCP in order to score political points and advance their careers.
The lawyer concluded in the complaints that the sentencing of Mr. Cai and many other innocent Falun Gong practitioners was political persecution trampling on the practitioners’ constitutionally protected right to freedom of belief.
In the lawyer’s words, the persecution of Falun Gong is a human rights disaster and one of the worst injustices in human history.
He demanded that the police, the prosecutors, and the judges involved in Mr. Cai’s persecution be held legally accountable for abusing the law and persecuting law-abiding citizens.
Arrest, Indictment, and Sentencing
Mr. Cai, a native of Maoming City, Guangdong Province, moved to Guangzhou in 2012 for his job. Both of his parents are in their late 60s and he also has a 15-year-old son, who has an intellectual disability due to an accident when he was younger.
For placing a flyer in front of a local resident’s home on the evening of March 19, 2022, Mr. Cai was reported to the police and arrested two days later. The Baiyun District Procuratorate approved his arrest on April 26.
The police on June 22 submitted Mr. Cai’s case to the Baiyun District Procuratorate, which then forwarded it to the Liwan District Procuratorate, the designated procuratorate to handle Falun Gong cases in Guangzhou. Prosecutor Xiong indicted him on August 18 and moved his case to the Liwan District Court. He was charged with “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Mr. Cai was tried through a virtual hearing at the Baiyun District Detention Center on November 2, 2022. The prosecutor couldn’t provide any evidence to show how Mr. Cai undermined law enforcement or what harm he had brought to society or any individual.
Mr. Cai’s lawyer entered a not-guilty plea for him. He also testified in his own defense and said that he merely wanted to be a good person by practicing Falun Gong.
The judge announced Mr. Cai’s verdict on April 6, 2023.
Mr. Cai was only 19 years old when the persecution started in 1999. As he remained firm in the practice, he was given a term at the Sanshui Forced Labor Camp and held in the local brainwashing center. The labor camp guards forced him to stand outdoors in the winter wearing only a thin layer of clothing for hours on end. He was also hung up by his handcuffed wrists and beaten, for protesting the persecution.
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