(Minghui.org)
Name: Zhang FengxiaChinese Name: 张凤霞Gender: FemaleAge: 52City: DaqingProvince: HeilongjiangOccupation: N/ADate of Death: August 17, 2025Date of Most Recent Arrest: August 11, 2025Most Recent Place of Detention: Daqing City Second Detention Center
A woman in Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, died in custody seven days after being arrested for her faith in Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. She was 52 years old.
Ms. Zhang Fengxia
Latest Arrest and Death
As soon as Ms. Zhang and her husband returned home at around 2 p.m. on August 11, 2025, after a gathering with her family, they had a power outage (the family later learned it was a police trap). Not long after, someone called Ms. Zhang’s husband and said he scratched his car. When Ms. Zhang’s husband opened the door to go downstairs to check on his car, chief Xue and two officers from the Huizhan Police Station broke in and took Ms. Zhang away. She was admitted to the Daqing City Second Detention Center in the evening, charged with “undermining law enforcement,” the standard pretext used to criminalize Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Seven days later, at 2 p.m. on August 17, Ms. Zhang’s family received a call from Hou, the detention center director. Hou asked them to come to the hospital immediately, as Ms. Zhang was dying. “You better come quickly to the emergency room. If you are late, you may not see her again!” he said.
The family rushed to the hospital and saw that Ms. Zhang had multiple tubes inserted in her, and she was wearing an oxygen mask. The doctor said she had a ruptured cerebral aneurysm, and she'd lost over 200 cc of blood. He said they couldn’t do a craniotomy or anything else to save her. The family agreed to take her to an intensive care unit (ICU) and put her on a ventilator.
More than 20 officers from the local police station and detention center were at the hospital. Detention center director Hou ordered the family to sign a form to place her under conditional bail. “We have so many people here. If you don’t sign it, none of us can leave.”
After the family was forced to sign the form, the police asked them to sign another form saying that she had already been released. The family refused to comply this time. They questioned the police, “What release this is? You’re releasing her to the ICU?”
Without further pressing the family to sign the release form, the police and detention center officers left. The family was left to pay for Ms. Zhang’s emergency treatment and ICU expenses. She died shortly after and her body was cremated three days later.
The family contacted the police and demanded an explanation about her arrest and death, as well as compensation for their loss. The police and detention center refused to bear any responsibility and said that she died from an acute disease.
Police chief Xue said that they were ordered to close any pending Falun Gong cases within three years. “Our job is to arrest people, nothing else.”
Detention center director Hou said, “We are only responsible for detaining people. We wouldn’t even touch a strand of her hair. We don’t care how the investigation of her case turns out.” Hou also claimed that they performed a physical exam of Ms. Zhang before incarcerating her, and that she passed the requirement.
Ms. Zhang’s family also saw the surveillance video of her final moments at the detention center. According to the video taken around noon, she was taking a nap after lunch, lying on her back, with her hands overlapping on her abdomen. Just after 12 p.m., she suddenly lifted her hands and legs and suspended them in the air, with her hands still overlapping. A few minutes later, a doctor came and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on her. Twenty minutes later, she was carried onto an ambulance and taken to the hospital. Her family suspected that she had stopped breathing in the detention center, otherwise the doctor would not have performed CPR on her.
Earlier Arrest
Ms. Zhang was previously arrested on July 12, 2022, by eight plainclothes officers from the Huizhan Police Station. They confiscated dozens of her Falun Gong books, a photo of Falun Gong’s founder, and a desktop computer. They said that she had been recorded by surveillance cameras while distributing Falun Gong materials on every floor in a residential building, and they had been planning to arrest her since April of that year. Both Ms. Zhang and her husband were taken to the police station for interrogation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were denied admission by the detention center and released on bail.
Due to her arrest, Ms. Zhang was fired from her job at the cafeteria of Dongfeng Middle School. She then found another job at a local kindergarten.
A year later, police officer Li Zhicai found her and ordered her to sign a residential surveillance form, as her bail term had ended. Li also demanded that she go with him to the procuratorate to answer some questions. She refused to comply and was repeatedly harassed.
To void further persecution, Ms. Zhang was forced to live away from home. The police followed and harassed her husband instead, causing him to be unable to live a normal life.
Li reduced the frequency of harassment after a year and he said to Ms. Zhang’s family, “Ask her to come back. She can live a normal life now. We don’t have enough evidence to sentence her.”
Ms. Zhang returned home in early 2025, only to be arrested on August 11, 2025. The police submitted her case to the Gaoxin District Procuratorate the next day and attempted to seek a heavy prison sentence, unless she wrote a statement to renounce Falun Gong. She insisted that she hadn’t done anything wrong by practicing Falun Gong.
Taking Up Falun Gong
Years ago, Ms. Zhang was admitted to Qiqihar University, and her sister was admitted to a secondary technical school. Because the family couldn’t afford the tuition for both, she gave up going to college so that her sister could get ahead.
When Ms. Zhang’s son was only three months, in 1998, she developed cysts around her neck. No matter what treatments she decided to do, she had to stop breastfeeding her baby. After hearing about her situation, a neighbor introduced Falun Gong to her, and she learned the exercises right away. That night, she had a fever, and the cysts were gone when she woke up the next morning. She was beyond ecstatic and practiced Falun Gong diligently after that. She lived by the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and tried her best to help others.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, she risked her life to distribute informational materials about Falun Gong and hoped more people could benefit from it like she did. Because of her courageous efforts, she was arrested and eventually tortured to death while still in custody.
Related Report:
3 Group Arrests of Falun Gong in 3 Months Under New Chief of Daqing City Police
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