Yao Lishu (姚力书)
Yao Lishu (姚力书) is a former middle-school teacher from Qingyang, in China’s Gansu Province, who is serving a six-year prison sentence in connection with his practice of Falun Gong.
Yao, born in 1980, was from Yima Township in Qingcheng County, Qingyang, and lived in Caotan Village, Pengyuan Township, in Qingyang’s Xifeng District. He worked as a middle-school teacher and was a Falun Gong practitioner.
First detention (2008–2013)
According to a June 2023 Minghui report, police detained Yao on July 11, 2008, at his school dormitory. In March 2009 the Qingcheng County Court tried his case and sentenced him to four years in prison; he was transferred to Tianshui Prison in Gansu in April 2009. After completing that sentence, Yao found that his school had dismissed him, and his requests to be reinstated were refused.
Second detention and 2023 sentencing
The same report states that Yao was detained again in late November 2021, in connection with providing Falun Gong informational materials to fellow practitioner Zhang Ping (张萍), who was also detained. The Zhenyuan County Court in Qingyang heard the two cases together by video link in 2023; Yao’s lawyer entered a not-guilty defense. In May 2023 the court sentenced both Yao and Zhang to six years in prison. Yao filed an appeal, the report said.
A Chinese Human Rights Defenders database record on Yao, entered in July 2023, gives the sentence end date as November 2027; it lists the criminal charge and the detention facility as unknown.
Current listing
Rights Defense Network (维权网), in its Issue-131 prisoner list dated August 31, 2026, lists Yao Lishu among prisoners serving six-year sentences in its current-custody roster. The appeal’s outcome and his present place of detention have not been confirmed in the sources available.
Sources: Minghui, June 6, 2023; Chinese Human Rights Defenders political-prisoner database record (entered July 4, 2023); Rights Defense Network Issue-131 (August 31, 2026).
For a full archive of media and source records on this case, see: Yao Lishu (姚力书) — Media Profile & Archive.