The woman resisted years of deprogramming, and from 2000 on has spent most of her time in jail.
by Yang Feng
The family of Professor Wang Jiafang, a Falun Gong practitioner, has been informed that her appeal has been rejected and she should remain in jail until September 9, 2025. She had been sentenced in July 2022 to a jail term of four years by the Liwan District Court of Guangzhou city, in Guangdong province, for being active in a movement banned as a xie jiao.
Wang was born in 1964 in Xiangfan city, Hubei province. A brilliant mathematician, she became associate professor at the Mathematics Department of Guangzhou University, but later lost her job for her practice of Falun Gong.
In November 2000, Wang was first detained after she was caught distributing Falun Gong leaflets in Guangzhou. The Guangzhou Intermediate Court sentenced her to two years in a labor camp. She claims she was tortured there, and pressures were exerted on her husband, a CCP cadre and military man, who ended up divorcing her.
Upon her release from jail in April 2001, she was sent to a specialized “reeducation” facility to be “deprogrammed,” where she remained until February 2004. After her return back home, she was fired by her university.
As she continued to practice Falun Gong, she was arrested again in October 2004 and sent to a different “reeducation” facility in Guangzhou for further sessions of “deprogramming,” which were again not successful. In fact, in September 2007 she was caught practicing and spreading Falun Gong again, detained, and sentenced to nine years in jail.
She was released in October 2016, but the long jail term had not succeeded in persuading her to abandon the practice of Falun Gong. One year later, on October 27, 2017, she was arrested again. On August 24, 2018, she was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. She was released on April 26, 2021.
Once again, however, the police ascertained that she was still an active Falun Gong practitioner, which led to a new detention on September 10, 2021, followed by a formal arrest on September 25.
As mentioned earlier, last year she was sentenced to another 4 years in prison under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code, which forbids being active in a xie jiao. Her appeal has now been rejected.
