Chen Jinxiu (陈金秀), a 67-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Jiayu County, Xianning City, Hubei Province, was seized at home in April 2025 and later learned by her family to be serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence at Hankou Prison in Wuhan. A rights-defense roster dated August 31, 2026 lists her among reported current-custody cases in its three-and-a-half-year-sentence group.
On the morning of April 2, 2025, officers from the Jiayu County Public Security Bureau, the Xinjie Township police station, neighborhood-committee staff, and special police from the Xianning City Public Security Bureau entered Chen’s home and took her away, according to a July 2026 investigative notice issued by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG). She was first held at the Jiayu County Detention Center, then moved to the Zhenjitang (镇济堂) rheumatism specialty hospital in Xianning for continued custody.
On May 28, 2025, Chen was tried by the Jiayu County Court, which announced no verdict, the notice says. She was subsequently moved through two more facilities — the Wuhan Wuzhong (武中) psychiatric hospital in Xianning’s Wenquan district, and a drug-rehabilitation treatment center at the Xianning Zhenjitang Chinese Medicine Hospital — after which her family lost contact with her for about half a year. In late 2025, two prison police officers from a Wuhan prison visited Chen’s sister’s home and disclosed that Chen had been sentenced to three years and six months, but refused to say where she was held. In mid-May 2026, after checking multiple Wuhan prisons, her family found that she was being held at Hankou Prison (汉口监狱).
When the family tried to deposit living expenses for her, prison staff told them they first had to obtain a “prison bank card”; after they did, the transfers still could not go through, the notice says, and local personnel later came to the family’s home asking about the matter. The notice attributes the account of events to its investigation and family contacts; no official Chinese government statement, court judgment, or detention record for any of these episodes has been independently verified.
The same notice reports that Chen has been persecuted repeatedly over the years: her husband divorced her under pressure, her only son drowned while she was serving a period of re-education through labor, and she had previously been subjected to one-and-a-half years of re-education through labor, a three-year prison sentence, three terms in “brainwashing centers,” repeated home raids, and torture. The dates of the earlier one-and-a-half-year labor-camp term and the earlier three-year sentence are not given in the notice.
Sources: Rights Defense Network / 维权网 Issue 131 monthly report, August 31, 2026 (Chinese edition, 3-years-6-months sentence group; English edition A–Z roster); World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, investigation notice dated July 14, 2026. See the Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, provenance, and evidentiary limits.
View the Chen Jinxiu Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, reporting chronology, and provenance.