# Duan Qiongying (段琼英)
Duan Qiongying (段琼英) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Sichuan Province, China. On July 25, 2024, the Wenjiang District Court in Chengdu sentenced her to three years and six months in prison for practicing Falun Gong. She appealed the verdict.
## Arrest in May 2023
On May 24, 2023, officers of the Wenjiang District Police Department arrested Duan Qiongying along with seven other practitioners in Chengdu. Police held the group at the Xinjin Brainwashing Center and told their families only that they had been placed under “residential surveillance at a designated location” for “inciting subversion of state power,” without disclosing where they were being held.
One of the eight, Mr. Sun Hao, refused to cooperate with interrogation and was later released on bail. The other seven, including Duan, were interrogated. According to the reports, police deceived some practitioners into giving information about other detainees by claiming the latter had already confessed, then used that material as prosecution evidence and pressured the practitioners to renounce Falun Gong.
## Formal arrest and indictment
On June 30, 2023, prosecutor Zheng Bo of the Wenjiang District Procuratorate approved the formal arrests of the seven practitioners. The accusation was changed to “undermining law enforcement with a cult organization,” the charge routinely applied to Falun Gong cases under Article 300 of China’s Criminal Law. The practitioners were transferred to the Pi County Detention Center and the Wenjiang Detention Center. Families and lawyers were initially barred from visiting them, and were allowed visits only after filing complaints.
Prosecutor Zheng denied family members’ requests to serve as non-lawyer defenders and denied a lawyer’s request to review the case documents. The families later learned that Zheng had indicted the practitioners on March 1, 2024, and moved their case to the Wenjiang District Court.
## Trial and sentencing
On July 25, 2024, the Wenjiang District Court tried the six practitioners in separate one-hour hearings. Court vice president Wang Ying presided over the trials of Duan Qiongying, Ms. Li Jun and Ms. Yu Chuancheng; another vice president, Dong Min, oversaw the other three. Judge Hu Weiwei attended all six trials. Hu barred one practitioner’s husband from the hearing and forbade another practitioner’s daughter from acting as non-lawyer defender, and restricted the defense lawyer’s access to case documents.
The court sentenced Duan Qiongying and Ms. Li Tao to three years and six months each; Ms. Yu Chuancheng to three years; Ms. Xu Yueqin and Ms. Luo Yi to two years and eight months each; and Ms. Li Jun to two years and two months. All received court fines (reported between 6,000 and 12,000 yuan). All of the practitioners appealed.
## Earlier documented incidents (identity link unresolved)
Two earlier reports document a practitioner named Duan Qiongying in Suining City, Sichuan: on November 8, 2004, police from the Baosheng Police Station arrested her at her home in Village 2, Baosheng Township, and sent her to the Chengbei Brainwashing Center; around July 14, 2005, she was among practitioners taken to a brainwashing center for so-called “transformation.” Because these incidents occurred in a different city nearly two decades before the 2023 Chengdu case, it is not established whether they involve the same person.
## Status
**Current prisoner (as of September 2026).** Sentenced to 3 years and 6 months on July 25, 2024; appeal reported. No subsequent release has been documented.
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Media Profile & Archive: Media Archive: Duan Qiongying (段琼英) — Arrest, Trial and Sentencing Records, 2004–2024