(Minghui.org) On January 26, 2018, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Che Pingping was arrested for talking to people about Falun Gong in public. Ms. Che had just served four years in Jilin Women's Prison and is now being held in the No. 4 Detention Center in Changchun City.
During her time in Jilin Women's Prison, Ms. Che was tortured until she suffered a retinal detachment in her right eye. She did not receive proper medical treatment and is now almost blind in that eye.
Ms. Che's family hired a local lawyer to represent her. However, when they went to the detention center to visit her, an official informed their lawyer that he needed to show permission from the Jilin Justice Bureau to be able to represent Ms. Che.
Ms. Che's family and her lawyer then visited the justice bureau where an agent advised their lawyer against defending Ms. Che and demanded that he agree to the charge that practicing Falun Gong is a crime. The bureau agent also told the lawyer that he should not give Ms. Che's family any details of the case.
When their lawyer subsequently told the family that he could not reveal information about Ms. Che's arrest and condition, they fired him.
The family then hired a new lawyer from out of town who met with Ms. Che on May 4 and learned that procurator Lu Jinming of the Chaoyang District Procuratorate in Changchun City had gone to the detention center twice to interrogate Ms. Che. During one of these visits, Ms. Che had asked Lu to show her the legal basis for her detention and how practicing Falun Gong violated the law. He replied that he followed “internal rules” when dealing with Falun Gong cases.
Ms. Che's family has visited the Chaoyang District Procuratorate several times and also called procurator Lu and the head of the procuratorate to express their concerns. Each time they have spoken to Lu on the phone, he reiterates that he follows “internal rules” when it comes to dealing with Falun Gong.
