Having being jailed in the past for distributing flyers, Yin Xianping is told that even talking about a banned movement is a crime.
by Yang Feng
On August 2, 2021, the Yongxiu county People’s Court in Jiangxi province, after the Jiujiang Intermediate People’s Court had transferred jurisdiction on the case there, sentenced a nurse called Yin Xianping to a four-year jail term and a fine of RMB 20,000 under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code for “using a xie jiao to undermine the enforcement of the law.”
Xie jiao are the banned religious movements listed as such in China, and any activity on behalf of such groups is considered to be a “use” “undermining the enforcement of the law,” and leads to severe jail penalties.
What crime did Nurse Yin commit to “undermine the enforcement of the law”? According to the decision, on February 23, 2021, she was simply walking around Dongfeng Avenue in the prefecture-level city of Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, when she was overheard talking about Falun Gong. Since in the area, in addition to the county’s government and radio and television station there is also a school, she was arrested for “making inappropriate remarks” in the presence of minors.
One may suspect that Nurse Yin was under surveillance, and might have been provoked by plainclothes officials to discuss Falun Gong. In fact, the nurse had already been arrested twice and had spent time in jail for being a Falun Gong practitioner. She was arrested in 2013 and again in 2016 for distributing flyers, and sentenced to three years in jail by a decision of the People’s Court of Duchang county of June 12, 2016, under the usual Article 300.
Nurse Yin is the daughter of Yin Yucai, a veteran Falun Gong practitioner who was sentenced to three years of forced labor and eight years in jail for his activities in the banned movement.
Police and courts throughout China are sparing no efforts to identify and arrest Falun Gong practitioners, after they discovered that during the COVID-19 the movement gained new members by promoting the “Nine True Words” meditation as a way to boost immune defenses. The unexpected “resurgence” of Falun Gong is one of the reasons leading anti-xie-jiao officials are being accused of ineffectiveness and corruption and severely purged in China.
