Shandong Woman Sent to Prison to Serve a 1.5-Year Term for Practicing Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) Ms. Zhang Jianqiu from Yantai City, Shandong Province, was admitted to the Shandong Province Women’s Prison on April 22, 2025 to serve a 1.5-year term for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999.

Ms. Zhang was arrested on June 24, 2024, after she was reported for talking to people about Falun Gong at a local fair. Officers from the Cunliji Town Police Station raided her home that afternoon and confiscated her computer, printer, and Falun Gong books. They told her family that she was given 13 days of administrative detention in the Penglai District Lockup.

Ms. Zhang was transferred to the Yantai City Detention Center on July 5, 2024. The Penglai District Police Department submitted her case to the Penglai District Procuratorate on August 1, which approved her arrest on August 7 and indicted her on September 27.

The Penglai District Court heard Ms. Zhang’s case on November 20 and December 23, 2024. She was sentenced to one and a half years and fined 5,000 yuan days after her second hearing.

Ms. Zhang was transferred to the Shandong Province Women’s Prison on April 22, 2025. Like other newly admitted Falun Gong practitioners, she was initially held in Division 10 before she was transferred to Division 11.

Each division in the prison occupies a building, but Division 11 only has a 20-foot-tall barbed wire fence around it. Dubbed a “prison within prison,” Division 11 is notorious for using various means to torture Falun Gong practitioners in an attempt to make them renounce their faith. Practitioners are beaten, verbally abused and administered drugs. Ms. Zhang is forced to attend brainwashing sessions every day.

Related Report:

Shandong Woman Gets 1.5 Years for Raising Awareness of Persecution of Falun Gong