Jia Xiaoyu (贾小玉) is a mother from Shunping County, Baoding, Hebei Province, whose young son was left severely disabled after a polio vaccination in 2016. After years of petitioning for her son’s medical and rehabilitation costs, she was detained on February 1, 2023, and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (寻衅滋事罪).
Background
Jia’s son, Jia Yaojie, was born in May 2016 in Shunping County’s Taiyu Township. In July 2016, when he was about two and a half months old, he received an oral polio vaccine at a township health clinic. Within weeks he developed paralysis in his left lower limb, and was later diagnosed with acute flaccid paralysis at the Beijing Children’s Research Institute.
In December 2016, a Hebei provincial expert panel concluded that the case was an abnormal reaction to vaccination. In December 2018, the Baoding Medical Association assessed the boy’s disability as grade two, class C. He was later found to have intellectual disability and autism. According to his family’s account, he still cannot walk independently without braces, cannot attend school, cannot care for himself, and relies on full-time care.
Petitioning and detention
From 2017 onward, Jia’s family repeatedly sought assistance from the Shunping county government for the boy’s treatment and rehabilitation costs. According to a 2023 report, in February 2023, after petitioning at the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration (国家信访局), Jia was forcibly intercepted by Shunping county officials and taken back to Baoding.
On February 2, 2023, Shunping police placed her under administrative detention on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”; the detention was extended twice. On March 12, 2023, she was transferred to criminal detention on the same charge, and her arrest was approved on March 25, 2023.
Trial and sentence
On November 27, 2023, the Shunping court sentenced Jia Xiaoyu to four years’ imprisonment for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Her sentence runs from March 12, 2023 to March 11, 2027.
According to the reporting, the prosecution cited as the basis for the charge her public fundraising and petitioning activities in Beijing in 2018 and 2019 — including soliciting donations near Qianmen in December 2018 and on Wangfujing commercial street in March 2019 — as well as several petitions to the national complaints bureau in 2022.
Current status
Jia Xiaoyu was listed as in custody as of August 31, 2026, in the Rights Defense Network’s Issue 131 monthly prisoner report, which classified its roster as political prisoners and prisoners of conscience currently detained. Her current detention facility is unknown. Her custody status beyond August 31, 2026 is unverified.