A 76-year-old Shandong Resident Jailed for Third Time in June for His Faith in Falun Gong

Mr. Yi Xiangyang (also known as Yin Xiangyang), a 76-year-old farmer from Liujia Village in Longkou City, Shandong Province, was admitted to Shandong Province Prison on June 11, 2025, according to Minghui.org and Weiquanwang, a website which aggregates reports of abuse from human rights defenders across China. He is now serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence for telling people about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong—a spiritual practice that has been brutally suppressed in China since 1999.

Arrested and imprisoned in 3 months

Mr. Yi was arrested on the morning of March 5, by officers from the Xinjia Police Station and taken to Longkou City Detention Center later that afternoon. That same day, officers attempted to raid his home, but no one answered the door.

Eight days later, on March 13, five plainclothes officers returned—this time with a locksmith. Without announcing themselves, they removed the peephole from the door and inserted a long metal rod to manipulate the lock. Startled and believing it to be a break-in, Mr. Yi’s 75-year-old wife, Ms. Wu Manping was terrified. The officers then identified themselves and instructed the locksmith to completely dismantle the lock.

During the search, two officers restrained Ms. Wu while the others ransacked the home. They seized three music players and several small Falun Gong medallions. Ms. Wu was informed that Mr. Yi had been officially arrested a day earlier, on March 12.

Mr. Yi was later tried remotely via a cell-phone-video hearing by the Longkou City Court. Though the exact date of the trial remains unclear, he was sentenced to five and a half years. On June 11, he was transferred to Shandong Province Men’s Prison (also known as Shandong Province Prison).

Previous ordeals

Mr. Yi’s current sentence is the latest in a long history of persecution. Over the past two decades, he has been arrested at least 18 times and has served two previous five-year prison terms, from October 2004 to October 2009 and from August 2014 to August 2019. His wife, Ms. Wu, has also suffered repeated arrests. After one incident on October 27, 2014, she was sentenced to three years and four months and released in February 2018.

The couple and their son were arrested in October 1999 for traveling to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong. Ms. Wu and her son were detained for a month and fined over 4,000 yuan. In February 2000, just before Chinese New Year, the couple was arrested again in Beijing. In the Longkou liaison office, they were tied to chairs for two days.

Mr. Yi has endured beatings, sleep deprivation, and torture in custody. In October 2000, local police knocked out his front teeth.

During his 2005 sentence in Shandong Province Men’s Prison, he was denied restroom access, force-fed spicy water, and tortured with a twisted toothbrush. In 2006, he was forced to squat for nearly 20 hours daily for weeks. He was later subjected to nearly 100 hours of nonstop torture, resulting in broken bones and extensive bruising.

In July 2014, he was detained and beaten for distributing information materials about Falun Gong. He was arrested again in August 2014 and sentenced to five years.

Shandong Province Men’s Prison

Shandong Province Men’s Prison, where Mr. Yi is now held, is notorious for its severe treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. The Eleventh Ward of the prison is known as one of the most brutal units. Prison authorities have implemented violent “transformation” tactics to force practitioners to renounce their beliefs. These include beatings, prolonged sleep deprivation, forced sitting on small stools, and various forms of psychological abuse.

One practitioner, Mr. Wang Zhongshi of Zibo City, was sentenced to eight years and transferred to the Eleventh Ward in November 2021. He died in custody on July 22, 2024, at the age of 71.

Mr. Yi’s imprisonment adds to the growing body of evidence of continued religious persecution in China, especially targeting elderly Falun Gong practitioners whose only “crime” is their peaceful belief in truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.