Farmer and Wife Sentenced to Six and a Half Years for Their Faith

A married couple in Hailin City, Heilongjiang Province, has been sentenced to six and a half years each for their faith in Falun Gong.

Mr. Guo Libin and his wife, Ms. Chen Xitao, both farmers, were arrested at 3 a.m. on June 10, 2021, as they were getting ready to work in their field. The police submitted their cases to the Hailin City Procuratorate on September 16. They were indicted and their cases were moved to the Hailin City Court in mid-October.

They were tried in the Hailin City Court on December 23, and each was sentenced to six and half years and fined 5,000 yuan. They appealed to the Mudanjiang City Intermediate Court, which ruled to uphold their original verdicts.

Chen was taken to Heilongjiang Women’s Prison in May 2022 and Guo to Mudanjiang Prison about two months later.

Previous Persecution

This is not the first time that the couple has been targeted. They were previously arrested on January 20, 2014. Personal items worth 20,000 yuan were confiscated, and they were held in police custody for a month.

Chen was arrested again at the Harbin Train Station on June 13, 2017. The police ransacked her home the next day and interrogated Guo and their child.

Guo, his two sisters, and their father and stepmother went to Ding Yuhua, the head of the Domestic Security Office, to demand Chen’s release. Guo’s sisters were then given ten days of detention, his stepmother five days of detention, and Chen 15 days of detention. After they were released, the police harassed Guo several times.

On August 7, 2017, the police sneaked into the couple’s home in the middle of the night in a failed attempt to arrest their child, who was at home alone. The police then proceeded to harass Guo’s sisters and their father.

On June 2, 2018, Chen was arrested again and detained at the Hailin City Lockup for nine days which was then extended by the police for an additional 15 days.