A 23-year-old woman went on trial on Wednesday for protesting in front of a Hebei prison after she was rejected permission to visit her jailed father, a Falun Gong member.
Hebei citizen Bian Xiaohui was charged of “using a cult to undermine the enforcement of the law”. She has been detained since her arrest in March after holding a banner outside the Shijiazhuang Fourth Prison.
Photos her supporters uploaded to the internet show Bian unfurling a home-made yellow banner outside the prison with the words “I want to meet my father” inked in red characters. A petition Bian posted online said the prison had repeatedly rejected her requests to visit her father. The post has been shared over three thousand times on Weibo.
Bian’s father, Bian Lichao, was accused of disseminating video materials for the Falun Gong, a spiritual group outlawed by Chinese government shortly after it’s foundation in the 1990s. He was found guilty of “using a cult to undermine enforcement of the law” last year and was given a 12-year sentence.
Qiaodong District People’s Court has not released information about Wednesday’s trial and did not respond to telephone enquiries on Thursday.
But human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who is Bian’s leading attorney, told the South China Morning Post that he and three fellow lawyers retired from the court in protest during the trial.