(Minghui.org) When the Wen'an County Police in Langfang, Hebei Province tried to press charges against a Falun Gong practitioner, they probably thought it would be business as usual in the 18-year persecution of Falun Gong. However, they came up short. It seems that the county Procuratorate was unwilling to play along with indicting a person for exercising their constitutional rights, and instead, they released the practitioner with no charges.

Liu Yingjie and eight other Falun Gong practitioners went to the Daliu Town market on January 2, 2017 to distribute calendars with information about Falun Gong and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) persecution of this traditional spiritual discipline. The police arrested the nine practitioners and detained them in the Wen'an County Detention Center for 15 days.

Mr. Liu's case was transferred to the Wen'an Procuratorate in an attempt to initiate legal procedures against him.

The Procuratorate decided to not ratify the arrest of Liu but released him without charge.

Perhaps personnel at the Wen'an Procuratorate understand the nature of Falun Gong and know that practicing one's personal or spiritual belief is not illegal and is in fact protected by the Chinese Constitution.

Instances of practitioners being set free with no charges against them appear to be part of a growing trend in China, with more and more judicial employees becoming unwilling to persecute citizens who believe in Falun Gong's principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.

Background

Falun Gong was introduced to the public in 1992 and soon spread throughout China due to its beneficial effect on health and morality. Nearly 100 million people practiced it by 1999. Out of jealousy, and paranoid of losing control of the people, former CCP head Jiang Zemin initiated the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999.

The persecution has led to the deaths of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners over the past 17 years. More have been tortured for their belief and even killed for their organs in state-sanctioned live organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. 

Under Jiang's personal direction, the Chinese Communist Party established an extralegal security organ, the “610 Office,” on June 10, 1999. The organization overrides police forces and the judicial system in carrying out Jiang's directive regarding Falun Gong: to ruin their reputations, cut off their financial resources, and destroy them physically.

Due to the CCP's information censorship, the exact number of practitioners who have died in the persecution is not known.