Chinese Authorities Sentence Man to 4 Years in Prison for His Faith

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to mark the 24th anniversary of the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China by the Chinese Communist Party, in Washington on July 20, 2023. The pictures they are holding are of those who have been persecuted to death. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Pan Gang, a Chinese citizen who suffered a decade of abuse in detention centers for refusing to renounce his faith, has been secretly sentenced to four years in prison.

The sentencing of Mr. Pan, a 66-year-old Falun Gong practitioner, is the latest action taken by the communist regime in its ongoing campaign to eradicate the spiritual practice.

Mr. Pan was arrested on April 14, 2023, according to Minghui, a website dedicated to tracking the persecution of Falun Gong. The authorities denied his family’s visitation requests and refused to provide information regarding his indictment, trial, or sentencing.

Then, on Jan. 9, the family received a call from an officer from Nong'an County Detention Center, saying that Mr. Pan was transferred to Jilin Province Prison to serve a four-year sentence for practicing Falun Gong, reported Minghui.

This was not the first time Mr. Pan was arrested. He was first arrested in July 1999, when he worked at a tax bureau in Nong'an county of Jilin Province.

Since then, Mr. Pan had been arrested four more times for his faith. In total, he spent more than a decade behind bars. In an article published by Minghui in 2005, Mr. Pan gave detailed accounts of the physical and psychological abuses he endured during his detention in the regime’s forced labor camps, brainwashing centers, and other facilities between 2000 and 2003.

In one incident, a police officer tied Mr. Pan’s hands to a radiator and shocked him with high-voltage electric batons until he lost control of his bowel movements.

On another occasion, prison guards stripped Mr. Pan and poured cold water on his naked body before shocking him with electric batons. They then hung him from the ceiling with handcuffs. “I endured the pain for nine days. They finally took me down on the morning of the tenth day after the wounds on my wrists festered,” he recounted.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice consisting of simple, slow-moving meditation exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It grew in popularity during the 1990s, with 70 million to 100 million adherents in China by the end of the decade, according to official estimates at the time.

Feeling threatened by its popularity, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a systematic elimination campaign in July 1999. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Intensified Persecution

The persecution of Falun Gong remains a top priority for the regime’s police, prosecutors, and judges in over a dozen provinces, according to an analysis of official documents by the Falun Dafa Information Center.

In 2023, Chinese courts sentenced 755 Falun Gong adherents to prison, surpassing the previous year’s total of 446, according to data collected by Minghui. Many received lengthy sentences.

Hu Biao, a 79-year-old retired health official living in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was sentenced to nine years in prison in December.

The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution condemning Beijing’s systematic repression of the faith group. It calls on the Chinese regime to end the persecution and release Ding Yuande, a tea farmer who was given a three-year prison term for his faith.

The resolution also calls on the European Union and member states to introduce sanctions against “all perpetrators and entities that have contributed to the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China and abroad.”

To date, more than 5,000 Falun Gong adherents have been killed by torture, according to statistics collected by Minghui. Given the difficulty of getting related information out of China, human rights advocates say the actual death toll is likely far higher.

Detained adherents are vulnerable to becoming the victims of the state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting, an independent people’s tribunal in London confirmed. The tribunal concluded in 2019 that forced organ harvesting has taken place in China for years “on a significant scale” and that killing to supply the transplant industry continues to this day.

Western nations voiced concerns about China’s human rights records during a United Nations meeting in Geneva on Jan. 22. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council Michèle Taylor urged the regime to “release all arbitrarily detained individuals,” while Canada’s representative to the U.N., Leslie Norton, called on Beijing to end “enforced disappearances targeting human rights defenders, ethnic minorities, and Falun Gong practitioners.”