A MAINLAND court yesterday sentenced a Falun Gong follower to death for the first time in its two-year crackdown against the outlawed sect, but the sentence could be reduced to life imprisonment, Xinhua News Agency reported.
A court in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region ordered the death penalty for Lan Yunchang after he was convicted of murdering a man who refused to sell him arsenic to commit suicide, Xinhua said. The sentence was suspended for two years.
A suspended death penalty could normally be reduced for good behaviour to life in jail after two years.
Lan, a farmer in Liuzhou's Rong'an county, was described in the report as a ``fanatic'' Falun Gong practitioner eager to attain a state of enlightenment through death.
On April 16, Lan visited fellow villager Wei Shaoming's home asking for arsenic.
Wei refused the request fearing he wanted to poison himself. Lan became so upset that he axed Wei to death, the report said.
Lan fled but he turned himself in to the police the next day, the report said. It also said Lan refused to give up his beliefs in Falun Gong, even after police tried to ``educate'' him.
Last September, he was detained for 15 days for disturbing social order, the report said, with detailing whether Lan was involved in protests.
Courts in Beijing last week convicted four Falun Gong followers of ``intentional homicide'' and sentenced them to between seven years and life for allegedly organising a mass suicide attempt in Tiananmen Square in January.