Person profile: Cong Lanying
This archive collects the documented reporting on the case of Cong Lanying (丛兰英), the elderly Falun Gong practitioner from Weihai serving a four-year sentence in the Jinan Women’s Prison. It preserves the source chronology and notes where reporting is incomplete.
**July 22, 2024 — Minghui.org (English).** “Montreal, Canada: Rally in Front of the Chinese Consulate Protesting the Persecution.” Practitioners rallied outside the Chinese Consulate in Montreal on July 16, 2024, demanding the release of Cong Lanying. Cong Xinmiao, her daughter and a Canadian citizen, called for her mother’s rescue. The report stated that Cong Lanying had been sentenced to four years for writing letters to government officials at all levels describing how Falun Gong had benefited her health, and for doing the Falun Dafa exercises in a public square.
**November 3, 2024 — Minghui.org (English).** “Canada: Members of Parliament Call for an End to the Persecution of Falun Gong.” Scott Reid, MP and Conservative caucus chair, called for the release of Cong Lanying, identified as the mother of Montreal resident Cong Xinmiao, describing her as an 80-year-old practitioner from Weihai detained in the Jinan Women’s Prison. The report added the health history (severe myocarditis, cervical spondylosis, recovered after eighteen days of practice in 1997), the pattern of harassment and repeated detentions, the February 2023 arrest, the four-year sentence and 20,000 yuan fine with the family not informed, and the Canadian Foreign Minister’s June 2024 response to the case.
**July 2026 — Minghui weekly (Chinese original, via reprint).** The Chinese-language report confirmed the characters 丛兰英 and added: she was detained for more than thirty days in 2022 for practicing in a park, released on bail, and her home was raided during the bail period; in 2023 she was secretly sentenced to four years with a 20,000 yuan fine; as of the report she had just turned eighty-one and remained in the Shandong Jinan Women’s Prison, three years and four months into her detention.
**Reporting gaps.** The sentencing court is not named in any available report. The exact birth date is not given (reported age points to a birth year around 1944–1945). The original Minghui Chinese article should be click-verified at publication; the July 2026 text was read via a weekly reprint.
**Provenance note.** The two English Minghui reports and the 2026 Chinese report agree on the four-year sentence, the fine, the prison, and the advocacy timeline. The Canadian parliamentary remarks are independently reported by Minghui; Scott Reid’s name appears in the transcript as “Cong Langying,” a spelling variant.
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