Liu Yuqin is a retired teacher from Qingcheng County in Qingyang, Gansu Province, and a practitioner of Falun Gong. In 2024 she was reported to have been sentenced to four years in prison following her detention in September 2023 — her second prison term connected with her religious practice.
Background and earlier persecution
Born in 1961, Liu Yuqin was a first-rank teacher at Longdong Middle School in Qingcheng County and began practicing Falun Gong in April 1998. According to practitioner-affiliated reporting, on the afternoon of April 15, 2009, she was detained at her school office by public-security officers from Qingyang and Qingcheng County, then subjected to overnight interrogation and held successively at the Huan County and Qingcheng County detention centers, where the reporting states she was mistreated. She was subsequently sentenced to three years, and on May 18, 2010 was transferred to Gansu Provincial Women’s Prison. The reporting describes her as emerging from that term emaciated, and states she was dismissed from her teaching post in 2010.
The 2023–2024 case
On September 19, 2023, Liu Yuqin was distributing Falun Gong materials in Gaolou Township when she was reported to police. Officers from the Heshui County public-security bureau arrived at her home in Gaolou, Qingcheng County, detained her and her husband, and searched the residence, seizing practitioner materials, books, a player, a tablet, and phones. Her husband was released that evening; Liu was taken to Ning County Detention Center the next day.
On January 11, 2024, court staff of the Zhenyuan County Court held a trial session at Ning County, where the lawyer engaged by her family entered a not-guilty defense, and Liu herself stated in court that she was not guilty. The reporting states that she was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison; the criminal charge was not disclosed in the reporting, and the term was stated to run through September 18, 2027. At the time of the August 2024 report she was appealing and was being held at Zhengning County Detention Center in Qingyang.
Current status
According to the last dated records (a case-database entry from September 2024 and a case report from August 2024), Liu Yuqin was serving a four-year term running through September 18, 2027. No independently verified information beyond those 2024 records is available regarding her custody, transfer, or release. (Her present-day status is unverified and is not asserted here.)
A note on other people with the same name
Several other documented cases involve women named 刘玉琴 in different provinces and earlier years (including cases in Shenyang, Yichun, Dalian, and Miyun/Beijing). Those are different people with separate documented histories and are not connected to the Qingyang case described on this page.
Sources
The biographical and case details above come from a human-rights case database and practitioner-affiliated reporting (Chinese language). The detention-to-sentencing narrative reflects those sources’ accounts; the criminal charge was not disclosed in the sources reviewed.