Li Lin was sentenced to four years for his border-related remarks. (Photo credit: Minsheng Watch website)
China has been experiencing a spate of cases of convictions for their words. After Wang Jingyu, a 19-year-old living abroad, and Pan Rui, the son of Chinese real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi, were sentenced by the Chinese Communist Party authorities to four years in prison for making comments about dead soldiers at the Sino-Indian border, news recently surfaced online that Li Lin, an electric power software engineer from Shenyang, Liaoning province, was sentenced by Xinjiang authorities to four years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” for tweeting information about the current situation in Xinjiang. He was sentenced to four years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power”. He was held in shackles for more than three years until recently, when his mother, Li Xinhua, appealed to have them removed. Li Xinhua revealed through the Internet that the police had used various falsifications to frame her son and that no one dared to sign the arrest warrant.
Guilty by words
According to the comprehensive Minsheng Watch website and Li Xinhua’s WeChat circle of friends, Li Lin, who lives and works in Shenyang, visited his Parents in Xinjiang on February 10, 2018, saw some of the real situation in Xinjiang, and then tweeted five messages about the current situation in Xinjiang, including the current state of local security checks, the bad local network, the halal signs being taken down, the numerous police stations set up on the local streets, and his comments about local cadres One-on-one poverty alleviation and Family ties policy.
On February 20, 2018, the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, Li Lin was suddenly taken away by the police at gunpoint. The police arrested, searched, and confiscated items without showing any documents or going through any procedures.
On February 21, 2018, the local public security bureau determined that the five messages posted by Li Lin were rumor-mongering and imposed a 10-day administrative detention penalty for “disturbing order in a public place.
After the 10-day period expired, his family went to pick him up, only to be told that the five messages he posted were suspected of inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination and were directly transferred to criminal detention.
On August 10, 2018, Li Lin was arrested on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”.
On December 5, 2018, the Xinjiang Intermediate Court sentenced him to four years in prison for inciting subversion of state power in the first instance.
On December 5, 2018, Judge Zhang Cheng and Clerk Li Hao went to the detention center and handed down the verdict to Li Lin. Li Lin filed an appeal on the spot. The written hearing of the second trial upheld the original verdict.
No way to appeal
In 2019, Li Xinhua went to the Xinjiang High Court several times to appeal, and each Time the judge of the case court said: the leader of the trial court said that this charge does not allow appeals and refused to accept Li Xinhua’s appeal materials.
In 2020, after Li Xinhua’s arguments, the Xinjiang High Court accepted her complaint but never gave the result, and Li Xinhua was not allowed to enter the complaint hall again after repeatedly pressing her. The bailiff, whose police number is 650023, said it was his duty to keep Li Xinhua out of the court.
At the end of 2020, the Sixth Inspection Team of the CPC Central Committee arrived in Xinjiang, and after Li Xinhua submitted her report, the team called the material back to various units in Xinjiang, after which the Xinjiang High Court gave her a Notice of Rejection of Complaint.
Police falsification and framing
Li Xinhua complained that she was given a full set of case files, showing that the police arrested Li Lin without the relevant legal formalities, and that the formalities were made up 10 days later. The evidence in it was also false. Li Lin sent a total of 5 border-related messages, accumulating 8 comments, 21 retweets and 51 likes, but was accused and found to have sent 34 border-related messages, accumulating 347 comments, 1,224 retweets and 2,978 likes. The prosecutor’s office added that he posted a large number of articles, pictures and videos that incited subversion of state power. The verdict says that Li Lin insulted Xinjiang’s leaders, but Li Xinhua said that Li Lin had left Xinjiang for more than a decade and did not even know who the leaders of Xinjiang were. In addition, Li Lin’s domicile and place of residence were both Shenyang, Liaoning Province, while the police gave a change back to Xinjiang.
Li Xinhua alleged that the police also falsified the handling procedures of the case, and 10 days after Li Lin was arrested, the police claimed to have retrieved a cell phone from his pocket. Li Lin was arrested on Feb. 20, 2018, and the summons warrant was dated March 3, 2018, and the search transcript also recorded a search at Li Lin’s Home on March 3, 2018. The police also got someone to commit perjury and forge Li Lin’s signature.
The arrest warrant should have been signed by the director, but no one dared to sign it, and the seals on the fake evidence were all blurred, and none of them could be seen to be the case unit.
Moreover, the lawyer hired by Li Xinhua was not allowed to defend Li Lin, and Liu Jinbo, the public prosecutor of the Urumqi Prosecutor’s Office, gave the recommended lawyer Tian Culture to lure Li Lin to confess his guilt. The intermediate court did not allow family members to observe the trial, but the verdict stated that the trial was held in open session according to the law, and the trial transcript stated that “four people were present”. Li Xinhua asked where the four people were from, but the answer was that the clerk had written it down wrong.
Li Lin wore shackles for 3 years
Li Xinhua disclosed that her son Li Lin had been kept in the detention center and was not allowed to be visited by his family. Li Xinhua requested that Li Lin be transferred to the prison so that he could visit him according to the law, but received a reply that the prison was full. Later, at her strong request, she saw Li Lin three times in November and December 2019 and January 2020. After the outbreak of the CCP virus (Wuhan pneumonia), the police used the Epidemic as an excuse not to allow Li Xinhua to see Li Lin again. It was not until low November 2020 that she finally spoke to Li Lin by phone.
Before the Chinese New Year in 2021, Li Lin told her that he had been wearing shackles for more than 3 years and hoped that his mother, Li Xinhua, would find the relevant authorities to remove his shackles.
On February 10, 2021, Li Xinhua called the detention center and asked for the removal of Li Lin’s shackles. The correctional cadres said that the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region regulations state that people in such cases have to wear shackles all the time.
Li Xinhua asked for help from his community, and the community secretary and the community police communicated with the detention center and told them that the detention center was only an executive agency, and that the matter of removing the shackles needed to be reflected to the higher level.
In March, Li Xinhua received a call from the Urumqi Intermediate Court, saying that Li Lin’s shackles had been removed and that she should stop posting relevant information online.
On March 15, 2021, the secretary of the political and legal committee of the town of Yili Nilek, Xinjiang, and the director of the community under the jurisdiction of the two visited Li Xinhua at home. Wang, the secretary of the town’s Political and Legal Committee, said, “Because you are now living in Nilek, we have been assigned by the secretary of the street office and the community secretary where you live in Urumqi to advise you to petition according to the law and stop posting information about your son’s case online.”
Li Xinhua said, “Where is there a law to follow? If those case officers from the Urumqi Public Prosecutor’s Office had handled the case according to the law, how could my son Li Lin have been sentenced? How could he be shackled for a long time? Why is there no one to take care of my complaints and grievances with their massive falsified evidence, which are being shirked, fooled and suppressed? Does the law say that you can’t cry out your grievances and expose the darkness online? I’m posting today. In the future, not only will I not stop, I will post daily to expose.”
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