Liaoning practitioners are sentenced after months of surveillance and a trial that ignored illness, age, and basic legal safeguards.
by Yang Feng
The case that unfolded this month in Dashiqiao, Liaoning shows how a local campaign of surveillance and arrests can evolve into a courtroom ritual where outcomes appear predetermined and human frailty carries no weight. On August 11, 2026, nine residents were handed prison terms for their connection to Falun Gong, including one man who never practiced the discipline and was punished solely because of his family ties. The sentences followed a coordinated arrest operation on November 25, 2025, after months of phone monitoring and tracking by the Dashiqiao police. Two married couples were among those taken away that day, and all were indicted around March 2026.
Wang Zhaomin’s case illustrates how the arrests were carried out. She lived in Dongzhi Village, Yong’an Town, and was taken from her home on November 25, 2025, when police entered without warning.
The Dashiqiao Public Security Bureau had monitored local Falun Gong practitioners for half a year, and more than twenty officers from the criminal police brigade participated in the operation. Wang was held in the Dashiqiao Detention Center, then placed under criminal detention, formally arrested, and prosecuted.
The trial took place at the Zhanqian District Court on July 16 and 17. Presiding judge Gao Yue and assistant judge Xin Runhong signed verdicts that ranged from six months to nine years. The heaviest punishment was imposed on seventy-one-year-old Zhang Yuzhen, who received nine years and a fifty-thousand-yuan fine. His wife, seventy-two-year-old Gong Suyan, received eight and a half years and the same fine. Wang Zhaomin received seven years and a forty-thousand-yuan fine. Xing Chun’e received six months and a five-thousand-yuan fine. Other defendants received five years (Xing Dongmei), two and a half years (Wang Yun), two years (Li Xiuying), one and a half years (Yang Qiang), and one year and three months. The last sentence was imposed on Zhang Bo, who does not practice Falun Gong and was convicted because he is the son of Zhang Yuzhen and Gong Suyan. Three of the defendants (Xing Dongmei, Xing Chun’e, and Yang Qiang) had already endured forced labor terms in earlier years.
Zhang Yuzhen’s condition during the proceedings was alarming. He developed severe hypertension, cardiac problems, and symptoms of stroke while in detention. On June 23, 2026, he was taken to Luhe Hospital, where he remained shackled throughout his stay and was watched by four officers. His family was not allowed to see him. After his discharge on June 30, they returned him to the Dashiqiao Detention Center. His lawyer found him unable to walk, forced to crawl, and incapable of sitting upright without guards holding him in place. His eyesight had failed, his speech was slurred, and he appeared extremely thin. Despite repeated requests from his lawyer and relatives for medical bail, Judge Gao Yue refused to consider any form of release. Zhang was wheeled into the courtroom for the trial, a scene that conveyed the extent of his deterioration.
The sentences imposed in Dashiqiao show how the machinery of repression continues to function through surveillance, mass arrests, and trials where age, illness, and the absence of criminal conduct carry no weight. Including a non-practitioner among the convicted confirms that mere association can be treated as a crime. The deterioration of Zhang Yuzhen and the harsh punishments given to elderly defendants reveal a system that treats belief as an offense and vulnerability as irrelevant.
Yang Feng uses a pseudonym for security reasons.
