(Minghui.org) A 79-year-old woman in Dalian City, Liaoning Province is scheduled to appear in court at 10:50 a.m. on August 9, 2023 for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.
Ms. Tong Shurong’s upcoming trial stemmed from an incident on October 17, 2021, when she went to the Yingchengzi Neighborhood in Ganjingzi District, Dalian City that day to raise awareness of the persecution of Falun Gong. After she spoke to a few middleschoolers, the students reported her to the police. The Yingchengzi Police Station harassed Ms. Tong at home several times before giving her six months of house arrest. [In China, the police, the procuratorate, and the court can put people under house arrest.]
In May 2022, officers Hu Yanqing, Xu Ning, and Liu from the Yingchengzi Police Station came to Ms. Tong’s home and said that she had just been given a second six-month house arrest and that they had submitted her case to the Ganjingzi District Procuratorate.
Prosecutor Liu Shuang gave Ms. Tong a third six-month house arrest on October 17, 2022. Liu and prosecutor Zhang Fuli then indicted Ms. Tong and submitted her case to the Ganjingzi District Court.
Judge Duan Li summoned Ms. Tong to the court on May 15, 2023 and ordered that she be taken to the local detention center to await trial. The order, however, was only issued to the police. At around 12:30 p.m. that day, two officers from the Yingchengzi Police Station came to Ms. Tong’s home and drove her to the Ganjingzi District Court. The police didn’t tell her what place it was and she thought she was at the Ganjingzi District Procuratorate.
She asked a staffer there to pass her letter to prosecutor Liu. The staffer said there was no prosecutors in the court. Only then did Ms. Tong realize she had been taken to the courthouse. She asked to leave but was ordered to wait for someone from the Yingchengzi Police Station to pick her up (the two officers who drove her there left after dropping her off).
At 6:30 p.m., four police officers arrived and took Ms. Tong to the local Yisen Hospital for a physical examination. She was found to have high blood pressure, but the police still drove her to a local detention center per the judge’s order. Ms. Tong was denied admission and the police finally drove her home at 9 p.m. They gave her a copy of her indictment before they left.
Ms. Tong noted that the indictment contained fabricated allegations against her, so she wrote to the procuratorate and the court to refute the allegations and request that her case be dismissed. She also wrote to relevant government agencies asking them to uphold justice for her. She didn’t hear anything back.
Judge Duan later scheduled Ms. Tong’s first court hearing for August 9, 2023.
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