Four Falun Gong Practitioners from Qingdao City, Shandong Province, Sentenced

Four Falun Gong practitioners from Jiaonan, Qingdao City, Shandong Province were sentenced and are now incarcerated in Jinan Prison. Mr. Zhang Maoyuan was sentenced to seven years, Mr. Li Qibing to three and a half years, and Mr. Geng Dexiao to five years. Mr. Yin Qiye's sentence is yet to be clarified.

Disabled Seniors Left Uncared for When Their Children Are Arrested

The Political and Legal Affairs Committee of Jiaonan Government and the 610 Office (an organisation of special agents just for persecuting Falun Gong) in Qingdao ordered the arrest of 14 Falun Gong practitioners in March and April 2012. Mr. Zhang Maoyuan and his wife, Feng Jinhua, were arrested on their way home from work by officers from Zhangjialou Police Station on March 27th. Mr. Zhang was taken to Jiaonan Detention Centre while Ms. Feng was taken to Dashan Detention Centre in Qingdao. Later Ms. Feng was found to have high blood pressure, and the detention centre would not admit her. The Political and Legal Affairs Committee and the 610 Office then transferred her to Jinan Brainwashing Centre.

Mr. Zhang and Ms. Feng were known as good people in their hometown, Xiaohedong Village in Jiaonan. They had been taking good care of two of their elderly disabled parents, an 85-year-old father, a veteran, who has been paralyzed in bed for the last ten years, and an 87-year-old mother who is blind and cannot manage on her own. Their caring children fed them and took care of everything for them.

After the police arrested Mr. Zhang and Ms. Feng, they locked the two disabled seniors in their room. When relatives found out about this, the two seniors hadn't had anything to eat for two days. Family members and neighbours burst into tears to hear them crying, “Where is our son? Why doesn't he cook and bring us any food?”

Young Girl's Father Arrested

Falun Gong practitioner Li Qibing, 45, was a physician at the Women and Children's Hospital of Jiaonan. His wife worked overseas, and he lived with his parents, who are almost 80, and his 7-year-old daughter. Mr. Li also often helped out his parents-in-law, who live in the same city.

Mr. Li was arrested at home at noon on March 6th. The grandparents were afraid to tell his daughter, Zhenzhen, when she came home. Instead they said that her father was on a business trip. Several days later, her father still was not home, and Zhenzhen questioned her grandparents hard about her father's whereabouts. Once she cried so hard from missing her dad that she threw up. Zhenzhen was usually picked up by her Lao Lao (her mother's mother) from daycare every day and sometimes stayed overnight at her place, but now every day she asked to go to her Ye Ye's (her father's father) and Nai Nai's (her father's mother) to wait for her father in case he was released. Lao Lao told Zhenzhen to study hard and learn to write well so that she could write letters to her father. Zhenzhen always nodded in tears.

While Mr. Li was detained in Jiaonan Detention Centre, the Jiaonan 610 Office did not let his family visit him. A couple of months later, Zhenzhen's Ye Ye received a notice from Jiaonan 610 Office confirming the arrest of his son, Li Qibing. The whole family fell into deep sorrow to learn that he would be tried.

Mr. Geng Dexiao, Mr. Yin Qiye, and Mr. Li Qibing were tried in Jiaonan City Court on August 6th. Mr. Zhang Maoyuan was tried on August 22nd, and Zhang Shuxin, Zhang Shuwen, Chen Yuzhen, and Ms. Feng Jinhua on August 23rd. The public procurator, Sun Chunfang, described the case briefly, and judge Liu Jinren quickly went through the so-called evidence. Proper trial procedures were not followed.