China: Deng Xiaoming Sentenced to Prison for His Spiritual Beliefs

n western China, a store owner faces six-and-a-half years in prison for practicing his beliefs. Here’s more from Sichuan Province.

Last year, in the Chinese city of Chengdu, Chinese police arrested the owner of a small shop and threw him into detention. This past Wednesday, after eight months, a Chinese court sentenced 38-year-old Deng Xiaoming to six-and-a-half years in prison.

His crime? According to Deng’s lawyer, Li Chunfu, Chinese authorities cooked up charges against Deng because he practices Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline severely persecuted by China’s communist regime.

[Li Chunfu, Deng Xiaoming’s Lawyer]:
„After Deng was detained, two months and ten days passed without any formalities. There was no approved arrest document, and we’re suspicious that the detention was illegal. Now the case has been in court for almost six months, which is blatantly illegal.“

Li says the procedure violates China’s criminal code, which states that a suspect in Deng’s situation must not be detained for longer than one-and-a-half months.

Deng’s wife says authorities attempted to stop Li, the family’s lawyer, from coming to court by not renewing his annual attorney license.

[Du Jing, Deng Xiaoming’s Wife]:
„Seeing that our lawyer has to go through the annual certification in Beijing in May, they pulled his license and did not let him get registered. There they said his card has expired, so our lawyer could not show up in court. But he had some foresight and instructed his deputy on how to handle the case.“

Deng Xiaoming’s case is just one among tens of thousands like it. Falun Gong practitioners in China are routinely arrested and sentenced on trumped-up charges, and are frequently subjected to abuse and severe torture in prison.

For more on how Falun Gong practitioners are facing the Communist Party’s oppression, you can watch our new documentary series A Decade of Courage at www.adecadeofcourage.com

(NTDTV)