After 22 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not let up in its brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice consisting of slow-moving meditation exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
At the same time, they were fined 691,900 yuan (about $108,000) by the court in total, including 1,000 yuan ($156) robbed by police officers.
Additionally, 14 Falun Gong adherents from Suzhou city, Jiangsu province, have been missing since May 10, according to Minghui.
They are believed to be held in a secret location—an unauthorized black jail—in Changshu, a satellite city of Suzhou.
By province, central China’s Henan and northeastern China’s Heilongjiang are the worst, with 31 and 10 jailed, respectively.
By age group, at least 13 of them are aged 65 years or older. Two of them are older than 80, including Xie Changxiu and Zheng Jiajin.
Xie, an 81-year-old woman residing in Shifang, a satellite city of Deyang city, in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, was given a two-year jail sentence with three years’ probation and a fine of 1,000-yuan.
Zheng Jiajin, an 81-year-old man residing in Xinxiang city, Henan province, on May 19 was illegally sentenced to nine years in prison by a court in Huixian, a satellite city of Xinxiang, and fined 10,000 yuan ($1,560).
By gender, a large portion of the illegally sentenced is women. Fifty-eight-year-old Wang Cuiying, a retired official from a Party school in Heze city, Shandong province, and a winner of awards for her outstanding job performance, was sentenced to five years in prison for adhering to her faith.
In 2012, she was detained for two years in a labor camp for her refusal to renounce her belief in Falun Gong, which she said had brought her back to health after her failure to cure her illnesses via modern medical means.