(Minghui.org) The Daqing City Intermediate Court in Heilongjiang Province ruled to uphold a seven-year prison sentence of a local woman without holding a hearing. Her family does not know where she is being held.
Ms. Duan Xiaorong, a 61-year-old retired teacher, was sentenced to seven years and fined 60,000-yuan in November 2025 for her faith in Falun Gong, a mind-body practice that has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since July 1999. She filed an appeal shortly afterward.
Her daughter went to the Daqing City Intermediate Court on December 25 or 26 to submit additional materials in preparation for her appeal hearing but was told that the court had already ruled against Ms. Duan.
The Daqing City Second Detention Center said that Ms. Duan was no longer being held there but refused to reveal where she is now being detained.
Details of Ms. Duan’s Arrest and Prosecution
Ms. Duan took her 86-year-old mother Ms. Ding Cuiying out for a walk and to sit in the sun in the courtyard of the apartment complex on June 24, 2025. Ms. Duan left to go grocery shopping nearby when they police arrested her. They ignored her pleas to let her take her mother home. She had to call her daughter to go pick up her mother. Ms. Ding was so devastated by Ms. Duan’s arrest that she fell ill and passed away in late September.
Ms. Duan was held at the Daqing City Second Detention Center and later indicted by prosecutor Zhu Xuan of Ranghulu District Procuratorate, which was designated to handle all Falun Gong cases in the greater Daqing region.
Ms. Duan was originally scheduled to attend an in-person hearing in the Ranghulu District Court on October 15, 2025, but judge Zhang Xinyue changed it to a virtual session that morning without prior notice. She also did not offer Ms. Duan the option to decline the virtual meeting and ask for a different court date as required by law. After the hearing began, she told Ms. Duan that the virtual meeting was due to “inclement weather” even though there were only snow flurries that day.
Ms. Duan’s family and lawyer were barred from staying with her in the detention center during the virtual hearing. It is unclear if they’d been allowed to attend the trial in the courthouse.
Zhang called Ms. Duan’s daughter on November 5, 2025, and ordered her to make her mother write a statement to renounce Falun Gong, even though she and her family, as well as the lawyer, were not allowed to visit Ms. Duan in the detention center.
Ms. Duan remained firm in her faith. Zhang called her daughter again on November 19 and said that Ms. Duan had been sentenced to seven years with a 60,000-yuan fine.
The verdict cited “prosecution evidence” that Ms. Duan was a “repeat offender.” Prior to her latest arrest, she was arrested on April 20, 2022, during a police sweep. The police deceived her into signing their forged interrogation records. When she was later released on bail, she indicated on the bail form that she never made the “confessions” stated in the forged interrogation records. That bail form, however, was not included in the case file following her latest arrest. Prosecutor Zhu did include the video recording of her interrogation in 2022 (with the audio removed) and the forged interrogation records as evidence that she was a “repeat offender.”
Ms. Duan filed an appeal with the Daqing City Intermediate Court, which ruled against her without holding a hearing.
Related Reports:
61-Year-Old Retired Teacher Sentenced to Seven Years for Practicing Falun Gong
3 Group Arrests of Falun Gong in 3 Months Under New Chief of Daqing City Police
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