Person profile: Feng Xiaoyan (丰晓燕)
### Feng Xiaoyan — Media Archive & Source Record (丰晓燕)
This page preserves the documented media record on Feng Xiaoyan (丰晓燕), the former Linyi People’s Congress deputy investigator who was forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric ward in 2020 after distributing pro-democracy leaflets in Beijing.
#### Chronology
**April 28, 2020** — Feng distributes democracy leaflets in Wangfujing, Beijing, advocating democratic reform, direct presidential election, and opposition to social injustice. Detained at the Wangfujing police station on suspicion of “disturbing public order.” (HRIC)
**April 29, 2020** — Transferred to Linyi authorities; some two dozen officers from the Yucai Road precinct forcibly take her to the No. 4 People’s Hospital of Linyi and admit her to the psychiatric ward without a psychiatric examination. She and her daughter are slapped; she is stripped naked and dragged across the floor despite a herniated disc. (HRIC)
**May 4, 2020** — Hospital begins forcing Feng to take psychotropic drugs three times a day; speech, thought, and sleep deteriorate; tongue swells; body aches. (HRIC)
**May 7, 2020** — Daughter Alice allowed a visit after threatening suicide; Feng says she would “rather die standing” than “live kneeling.” (HRIC)
**May 15, 2020** — Hospital denies Feng is there; daughter’s calls blocked. Complaints to Linyi PSB, Health Commission, Discipline Inspection Commission, People’s Congress, municipal government, and central authorities produce no remedy; Health Commission calls the admission procedure “proper.” (HRIC)
**May 17, 2020** — Daughter threatened with detention in the same hospital; placed under house arrest and surveillance. (HRIC)
**May 28, 2020** — RFI reports on the case as an illustration of the gap between China’s Mental Health Law and practice; republished by Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Daughter says police never formally explained the detention and gave no written confirmation. (CHRD/RFI)
**July 25, 2020** — Released from first hospitalization after about three months; forced to take lithium carbonate, paliperidone, and quetiapine at home. Daughter describes slurred speech, slower thought, stiff movements, dull expression, severe back pain. (Safeguard Defenders; daughter’s account to RFA)
**August 14, 2020** — NYU law professor Jerome A. Cohen publishes a commentary on the case and on the misuse of mental hospitals, noting she was taken to the hospital by her husband after being arrested, then released; daughter maintains her mother is entirely sane. (Cohen)
**August 29, 2020** — Husband Yang Guang (杨光) forces her back into the hospital; daughter says he has been violent toward her mother for years and had hospitalized her before. Discharged a few weeks later; prescribed sodium valproate, olanzapine, and lorazepam. (Safeguard Defenders)
**March 2021** — Chinese Human Rights Defenders’ annual report on human rights defenders (2020) cites Feng’s case as a stand-out example of psychiatric detention as political persecution. (CHRD)
**August 2022** — Safeguard Defenders publishes “Drugged and Detained: China’s Psychiatric Prisons,” documenting Feng among 99+ victims; records conflicting accounts of whether police handed her to her husband or worked with him, and the daughter’s harassment by hospital staff when she tried to free her mother. (Safeguard Defenders)
**2021 (reported)** — A cited account notes she had left the hospital but was suffering aftereffects of the forced medication. No independent confirmation since. (status: UNRESOLVED)
#### Media records
1. **Human Rights in China (NGO, established independent Chinese-rights outlet)** — “Feng Xiaoyan, Deputy Investigator of the People’s Congress of Linyi, Shandong, is Forced to Take Schizophrenia Medications for Distributing Democracy Leaflets” (April 28, 2020, account updated through May 2020). Detailed narrative based on the daughter’s testimony: leafleting, arrest, forced admission, forced medication, failed complaints, daughter’s house arrest, and Feng’s background (Shandong Normal University, 1989 movement, 2019 Hong Kong support). URL: https://www.hrichina.org/en/citizens-square/feng-xiaoyan-deputy-investigator-peoples-congress-linyi-shandong-forced-take
2. **Safeguard Defenders (international human-rights NGO)** — “Drugged and Detained: China’s Psychiatric Prisons” (August 2022). Feng’s case appears in multiple sections: the non-political/personal-gain framing (husband’s role), forced medication (three times daily, unnamed drugs, effects), incommunicado detention (daughter’s visit and the hospital lying about her presence), and harassment of the daughter. URL: https://storage.googleapis.com/haaretz-cms-prod/bd/4d/c0de4cc846598728672ff9c5ac4e/ankang-sd-advance-copy-embargoed.pdf
3. **Chinese Human Rights Defenders (NGO), republishing RFI** — “One democracy activist’s detention in mental health facility belies China’s legal reforms” (May 28, 2020). Notes she went to Beijing three weeks before the National People’s Congress to hand out pamphlets; police gave no written confirmation of the detention; CHRD’s Renée Xia on psychiatric detention monitoring. URL: https://www.nchrd.org/2020/05/one-democracy-activists-detention-in-mental-health-facility-belies-chinas-legal-reforms/
4. **Chinese Human Rights Defenders (NGO)** — “Defending Human Rights in the Time of COVID-19: Annual Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China (2020)” (March 29, 2021). Cites Feng’s case alongside Dong Yaoqiong’s as stand-out examples of psychiatric detention as political persecution. URL: https://www.nchrd.org/2021/03/defending-human-rights-in-the-time-of-covid-19-annual-report-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-defenders-in-china-2020/
5. **Jerome A. Cohen, NYU School of Law (scholar commentary)** — “Indefinite Confinement under China’s Mental Health Laws — Another Type of Arbitrary Detention?” (August 14, 2020). Summarizes the joint Cohen–Chi Yin Diplomat article on the case; notes the husband’s role and the daughter’s insistence on her mother’s sanity. URL: http://www.jeromecohen.net/jerrys-blog/2020/8/14/indefinite-confinement-under-chinas-mental-health-laws-another-type-of-arbitrary-detention
#### Conflicts and limitations
– Safeguard Defenders records conflicting accounts of the handover: some reports say police handed her to her husband, who then forcibly hospitalized her; others accuse the police of working with her husband. The HRIC account centers on direct police force.
– The daughter’s accounts (forced medication, violence by the father, never undergoing a psychiatric evaluation) are attributed to her and have not been independently adjudicated; the Linyi Health Commission called the admission procedure proper, and the Discipline Inspection Commission found no abuse of power (both via HRIC’s reporting).
– Feng’s whereabouts and condition after 2020 are not confirmed by any source consulted.