Mr. Qiu Baohe from Jiaohe City, Jilin Province, Secretly Sentenced to Five Years of Imprisonment

As of July 29th, 2008, Mr. Qiu Baohe, a Falun Gong practitioner, has been detained for over four months in Jiaohe Detention Centre. He has been secretly sentenced to five years of imprisonment by the Jiaohe City Court.

On July 29th, a guard surnamed Li refused to allow Mr. Qiu's family to visit him in the detention centre. Li also threatened them, saying that practitioners weren't allowed to hire lawyers.

The court issued a verdict on July 21st but did not notify Mr. Qiu or his family. Court officials did threaten Mr. Qiu, saying, "Your sentence will be longer if the case is appealed."

Since he began practising Falun Gong, Mr. Qiu has been a reliable, responsible and trustworthy employee of Jiaohe City's Forestry Department. Mr. Qiu had already reached retirement age, but his boss "rehired" him, saying, "It's hard to find a good man like him!" Now a good man has been detained and tortured for holding onto his beliefs!

The "legal appeal time period" was set between July 21st-31st, 2008. Mr. Qiu's family was able to find a lawyer and brought him to the detention center on July 31st to appeal Mr. Qiu's case.

However, guard Chen Jiayu tried to not let the family members and the lawyer see Mr. Qiu. He told them, "Qiu Baohe refuses to see a lawyer." When Mr. Qiu's family asked Chen what he told Mr. Qiu, Chen impatiently replied, "I told him a lawyer was here to see him!"

After repeatedly explaining the reason for their visit, Chen went back inside the detention centre and returned within a minute with a piece of paper and said, "This is what Qiu Baohe wrote, 'No appeal.'" After carefully examining the characters on the paper, Mr. Qiu's family found it odd that Mr. Qiu, a well educated person, would write the character "No Appeal" as "No statement" (Note: "Appeal" and "Statement" are similarly pronounced in Chinese.) Furthermore, Mr. Qiu's writing is very beautiful and in the older, standardized script. It was not the same as the scribbled character on the paper. The family members did not recognize the writing as Mr. Qiu's, so they told their lawyer to ask again to see Mr. Qiu in person. The head of the detention centre and guard Chen finally, but reluctantly, agreed.

Still, the detention centre officials tried to make things difficult for them by falsely claiming that the lawyer's certificate was not real and the photo on the certificate was not him. When everything was correctly verified, they had no choice but to agree to let Mr. Qiu's family and the lawyer see him.

After visiting with Mr. Qiu, the lawyer said, "Mr. Qiu was wrongly sentenced and the punishment was too severe. Processing the case was against the law. And from what I could see, the guards must have threatened Qiu Baohe, because he is too afraid to talk and afraid of making an appeal."

Since Mr. Qiu was arrested on March 27th, 2008, personnel with the Anti-riot Brigade and the Public Security Bureau have ransacked his home many times, withheld his salary and his wife Zhao Hongyan's salary since May of this year.

After the first trial to appeal his case, detention centre officials informed his family that they would need to pay them money if they wanted to visit him. The length of their visit would determine how much they would have to pay. However, when his family went to visit him, they weren't even allowed to see him.

We hope that everyone will pay attention to this matter and help stop the Chinese Communist regime's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2008/8/20/184415.html