Highlight: Mother of Steven and Lydia Wang Sentenced to 4 Years - Falun Gong Bulletin Ep 6

The second news item is about an urgent family rescue case of the mother of two U.S. citizens, Stephen and Lydia Wong. On March 29th, we were informed by these residents that their mother, Mrs. Ai Hualiu, was sentenced to four years in prison. According to the verdict obtained by Falun Dafa Information Center, their mother was sentenced because she distributed materials like flyers, CDs, paper bills, books, calendars, and other printed literature to neighbors in her community to tell them the truth about Falun Gong and the persecution. Freedom House estimates that 20 to 40 million Falun Gong practitioners within China are actively involved in civil disobedience like Ai Hualiu. A lower court in Changsha City ruled her guilty via Article 300. After pressuring her family's lawyer to not take her case and placing a court-appointed lawyer in her stead. Yeah, you should go into a little bit of detail on Article 300 because it's actually pretty interesting so maybe you can give a little context. Yeah, so actually an expert on Chinese judicial law informed us Article 300 of the Chinese criminal constitution has never proven a single Falun Gong practitioner guilty. The application of Article 300 is for felonies such as homicides, assault, robberies, or other crimes and an individual must first commit that crime to qualify as guilty under Article 300. Of course, this is a bigger issue because Falun Gong is not actually illegal to practice in China. That's kind of the big reveal here is that it's not on the list of banned cults. There's no law against practicing Falun Gong. And so for these courts to do this kind of clown court sentencing of Falun Gong practitioners, they need something to put down on paper. So it seems like that they're always using Article 300 as some charge, even though even legally it doesn't make sense. It doesn't hold in court at all. It doesn't hold legally. And so not a single verdict out of the thousands of Falun Gong practitioners ruled guilty under Article 300 has ever explained why distributing flyers would count as a crime, as a felony like homicide or assault or robbery. It should be noted that practitioners are assigned sentencing, that wide range of sentencing, in this case, four years could be seven, could be 10, could be any amount of years under Article 300. So it's very arbitrary. And oftentimes we've heard that the amount of years they'll be sentenced is told to the family members before they even arrive in court. So of course, this is all sham trial. As for Ai Hualiu's family, this recent sentencing follows 23 years of resilience and of persecution for this family. And the distinction that I want to make for this case is Ai Hualiu has tried to leave China before, in 2017, her son Stephen held a wedding. And before she could leave the country, police put her into custody. And it's assumed that it's in relation to her son's career in Shen Yun Performing Arts. Her son is a principal dancer in this performing arts troupe. Family is also worried that she might be harassed this time around for his participation in performing arts. In the United States. In the United States. And the reason that the CCP is so against Shen Yun is because it provides viewers around the world a different lens and a different perspective of how China used to be. Before communism. Before communism. And it completely demolishes all of their propaganda about how the CCP has led to the greatness of the Chinese people, has led to the prosperity of the Chinese people. Yeah, of real traditional Chinese culture. And so this is actually an example almost of like, almost kind of like a transnational repression case where you have somebody that's prominent in the United States as a principal dancer, that's doing something the Chinese Communist Party doesn't agree with. And they have family in China that are apparently suffering or will have additional sentencing or their ability to travel will be withheld because of what their relatives are doing in the United States. Right now, there's a two month deadline for this case. It's very urgent because Ai Hualiu has appealed her sentence. And until June 1, the higher court will not have made their decision. And so she remains detained in Changsha number four detention center. So within the next two months, we need to make sure as much international attention comes to this case as possible, so that the Chinese government are pressured to let her go. Yeah. And so there's actually a petition, right? We'll link to it in the description below. That was started by the family members that you can sign. That's something easy that you can do to help. So we'll link to that.