Judges and Lawyers Persecuted for Practicing Falun Gong

AP: China Judge Sentenced Over Falun Gong BEIJING, February 7, 2001 (AP) - A Chinese court has sentenced a judge to seven years in prison for spreading teachings of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, a rights groups reported Tuesday, amid a campaign to punish [group] members within government ranks. Hu Qingyun, an appeals court judge in southern Jiangxi province, was arrested on July 21, 1999, the day the communist government outlawed Falun Gong as a public menace. Hu was charged with running an illegal business that sold 200,000 copies of Falun Gong books, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. Hu used his knowledge of the legal system to have some charges against him thrown out, but he was finally sentenced Jan. 10 by a district People's Court in Nanchang, Jiangxi's capital, the Hong Kong-based center said. Hu is appealing, the center said. The court refused to comment. The timing of Hu's arrest was significant. In the early days of the crackdown, law enforcement agencies targeted for arrest people believed to be [group] ringleaders. In the 18 months since, rank-and-file members by the thousands have been put into labor camps without trial or sent to deprogramming centers. [...]

BEIJING, November 9, 2001 (Reuters) - A former judge in China's southern province of Jiangxi died in detention after being jailed for involvement with the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, a prison doctor said on Friday. Hu Qingyun, once a judge at a provincial high court, died of leukemia earlier this year, the doctor at the Jiangxi Provincial Labour Reform Bureau Hospital told Reuters by telephone. [...] Hu's is perhaps the highest profile case of a former government official dying in detention after being accused of involvement with Falun Gong. The Falun Gong information centre said Hu's belief in the outlawed spiritual system, [...] had kept him alive since 1998, shortly after he was diagnosed with leukemia and told by doctors he had three days to live. His death came about two months after he was sentenced to seven years in jail for selling Falun Gong books illegally, it said. [...] Hu had been held in custody for 18 months before the sentencing, it said.

FDI: Judge of Jiangxi Province High Court, Falun Gong Practitioner: Dead in Custody NEW YORK, November 8, 2001 (Falun Dafa Information Center) -- Sources from Jiangxi Province, China, confirm that Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Hu Qingyun, the former department head of the Jiangxi Province High Court, died in the custody of Chinese authorities earlier this year. According to Hu's relatives, Hu had once recovered from leukemia through practicing Falun Gong. However, the disease relapsed when he was sentenced to prison and was not allowed to practice Falun Gong. Hu died on March 22, 2001 in Jiangxi prison hospital. When Falun Gong was banned in July 1999, Hu Qingyun wrote letters to state leaders on several occasions describing how Falun Gong had restored health to his fading body. Because of this, he was arrested twice, in July and October, 1999, respectively.

Agence France Presse: Chinese judge in mental asylum for Falungong membership: report BEIJING, Feb 11, 2000 (AFP) - A Chinese judge has been sacked and locked up in a mental asylum because he refuses to renounce his belief in the banned Falungong spiritual movement, a rights group said Friday. The Information Centre of Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said Huang Jinchun, a civil court judge at the Beihai Intermediate People's Court in the southern Guangxi autonomous region, was picked up at his house on November 15. The Hong Kong-based rights group said the 34-year-old judge had been detained at the Long Qianshan asylum in the city of Liuzhou, and had been prevented from seeing his family for three months. The centre said Huang was injected with tranquilizers after he continued to practice Falungong meditation at the institution. A statement from the centre said Long Qianshan was run like a prison, and that patients were only allowed two hours of exercise per day and received no treatment. An official at Beihai Intermediate People's Court confirmed Huang was sacked in October, saying it was "possible" he was now in detention.

6/5/2002 -- Judge Huang Ronghe was a former coordinator of Zhangzhou City's Falun Gong Assistance Center. Because he was persistent in cultivating Falun Gong, he was suspended from work, investigated and expelled from the Communist Party. Now, he is often followed.

4/25/2002 -- On April 25, 2002, Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Li Jian was tortured to death in Henan Province No. 3 Labor Camp. He was a 34-year-old lawyer. He was kidnapped and illegally sentenced to three years of forced labor because he made truth clarification materials. The authorities arrested him in 2000 and sent him to the No. 3 Labor Camp in Xuchang City, Henan Province in late April 2001. He was tortured on numerous occasions with rope and endured compulsory brainwashing. He was deprived of sleep and forced to do heavy labor, not being allowed to rest until he finished his assigned work.

12/23/2001 -- Li Wendong, male, was a lawyer in a shipping company in Beijing. Shao Yan, female, was a professor at the Agriculture University. Because they were firm in their beliefs in Falun Dafa, they were forced to abandon their home to avoid persecution. They were arrested in Haidian District at the end of August 2001. They have since been transferred to Haidian Police Department Branch.

12/6/2001 -- Li Mei, a Judge in Hefei City's Middle Level Court, was force-fed in the female detention center because she went on a hunger strike to protest the persecution. When the tube, more than one meter long, was pulled out, it was covered with blood. Currently, she is forcibly infused with saline solution.

9/19/2001 -- Mrs. Li, a teacher at China's Supreme Procuratorate's Institute, was dismissed from work in May 2000. Her apartment was taken away. At present, her family is homeless.

6/18/2001 -- Wang Shengrui (35, male) is a judge of Jinan Intermediate People's Court. On June 1, 2001, the court's chief and Party committee secretary secretly arranged for him to take a business trip to Licheng under false pretenses, where they arrested him and kept him in custody at a secret location. He was illegally arrested only because he didn't give up his beliefs and firmly practiced Falun Dafa. He has been deprived of his individual legal rights. As an independent judicial organization, the Jinan Intermediate People's Court violated the Constitution and broke the law.

2/7/2001 -- Lin Wangmao, the head judge at the Hongshan District Court in the city of Fuzhou City, was arrested when he went to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Gong on January 1, 2001. He was detained at the Chongwen Detention Center in Beijing for 20 days, during which time his physical and mental health was greatly damaged. Lin was sent back to Fuzhou on January 20, 2001, and he has been held at the Shuitou 1^st Detention Center since then. There is a high probability that he will get a prison term. After he started practicing Falun Gong, he received a number of prestigious awards for his outstanding job performance, including the Fujian Province Model Worker Award, one of the Top Ten Young Fujian Judges, and one of the Top Ten Law Enforcement Officers in the province. He was also honored with three special citations (one 1^st-class, one 2^nd-class, and one 3^rd-class) for his contributions to society, and his employer named him as an outstanding contributor for a number of years running.

2/9/2001-- Jiang Shuhua, senior judge of the People's High Court of Heilongjiang Province, was demoted during the second half of last year for persevering in practicing Falun Dafa. Jiang was arrested in December 2000 when he went to Beijing to clarify the facts about Dafa. He remains in custody in the Second Detention Center.

3/28/2000 -- Mrs. Li Meiping, 40 years old, was a former public procurator of Meizhou city. Because she practices Falun Gong, she was sentenced to a three-year labor term in Shanshui Labor Camp.

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