Yi Xiangyang (伊向阳)
Yi Xiangyang (伊向阳, also rendered 尹向阳 / Yin Xiangyang) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Liujia Village, Xinjia Subdistrict, Longkou City, Yantai, Shandong Province. In 2025, at the age of 76, he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for his faith — his third prison term.
The 2025 case
On March 5, 2025, Yi was arrested by officers of the Xinjia Police Station at the Xinjia Farmers’ Market. A formal arrest warrant followed on March 12, and he was held at the Longkou Zhangjiagou Detention Center. He reportedly went on hunger strike during detention. In spring 2025 the Longkou City Court sentenced him to five and a half years’ imprisonment in a hearing conducted remotely by cell phone; the exact sentencing date was not reported. On June 11, 2025, he was transferred to the Shandong Province Men’s Prison to begin serving the sentence. He was recorded as an in-custody sentenced prisoner in the Rights Defense Network’s monthly political-prisoner report of August 31, 2026.
No source identified by the time of this record stated the statutory charge against him. Do not merge with 乔向阳 (Qiao Xiangyang), a different person with the same given name 向阳 but a different surname.
A long history of persecution
Yi’s case is not isolated. He has been detained roughly eighteen or nineteen times since 1999. He served two previous five-year prison terms — from October 2004 to October 2009, and from August 2014 to August 2019 — and was subjected to torture while imprisoned in Shandong Province Prison, where his arm and leg were broken in 2006. In 2014, at age 65, he was arrested for distributing Shen Yun DVDs and held for fifteen days.
Family
His wife, Wu Manping (吴曼萍), also a Falun Gong practitioner, was sentenced to three years and four months in 2015 and released in February 2018.
Sources and limitations
This record rests on two independent source classes that corroborate each other: the Rights Defense Network (维权网) monthly political-prisoner report (Issue 131, August 31, 2026), which lists Yi Xiangyang in its 5-years-6-months sentenced-prisoner band, and Minghui reporting in Chinese and English (2025), which documents the full case timeline, his identity, and his prior persecution history. Minghui is a Falun Gong-affiliated outlet; its factual claims about dates, places, and events are reported as attributed. Details absent from all located sources include the exact sentencing date, the statutory charge, and any official court record. His whereabouts are confirmed only through the August 31, 2026 roster date.
A chronological archive of reporting on Yi Xiangyang’s case is preserved in his Media Profile & Archive.