Cong Wei (丛伟) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Dalian City, Liaoning Province. On November 12, 2024, the Ganjingzi District Court sentenced him to four and a half years in prison with a 30,000 yuan fine. It was his second prison sentence for his faith — and the latest chapter in a persecution history stretching back more than twenty years.
Cong, then in his early fifties, was arrested at work on May 9, 2024, by officers from the Hekouyanhai Police Station. Police raided his home and confiscated his Falun Gong-related materials. He was taken to the Dalian City Detention Center the next day but was denied admission because of high blood pressure, so police held him in a hotel instead. He managed to escape, but was recaptured on May 15 and has been held at the detention center since.
At a virtual hearing on October 12, his lawyer argued that no law in China has criminalized Falun Gong and that the State Press and Publication Administration lifted the ban on Falun Gong books in 2011. The presiding judge, Ni Shengjun, instructed the court clerk, Sun Wei, not to write down what the lawyer said. Cong was convicted on November 12. He appealed to the Dalian City Intermediate Court.
He had been through this before. Cong served a two-year forced-labor term at the Dalian Labor Camp from November 2000 to November 2002, where Minghui reports he endured severe torture — guards shocked him with multiple electric batons, leaving burn marks. He was arrested at work again in July 2004, seized from his home at 4 a.m. on September 12, 2006, and secretly tried and sentenced to one and a half years in prison by the same Ganjingzi District Court; he was arrested again in April 2010 while visiting a friend.
Those who knew him described a man changed by his practice: a former heavy drinker and smoker who quit both, an IT manager who refused kickbacks and built his company a computer system for 30,000 yuan, a son-in-law who visited his hospitalized parents-in-law daily and paid his mother’s medical and funeral costs in full.
After the 2024 sentence, Cong was moved to the Liaonan New Inmate Prison on March 12, 2025, and transferred to Dalian Prison on March 25, 2025. He suffers from severe hypertension and diabetes and was assigned to the third ward’s elderly and disabled unit. In March and April 2026, prison authorities twice refused his wife’s requests to visit him — the stated reason being that he would not plead guilty and would not wear a badge bearing his “crime.” On May 18, 2026, he began a hunger strike; in July the prison gave him fifteen days of solitary confinement for “resisting reform, self-injury and self-harm.” By early August 2026 he had been on hunger strike for more than two months and was described as extremely emaciated.
### Case summary
– **Arrest:** May 9, 2024 (recaptured May 15 after a brief escape)
– **Trial:** October 12, 2024 (virtual hearing), Ganjingzi District Court, Dalian
– **Sentence:** November 12, 2024 — 4 years 6 months, 30,000 yuan fine; appealed to Dalian Intermediate Court
– **Detention:** Dalian Prison (from March 25, 2025); previously Dalian City Detention Center, Liaonan New Inmate Prison
– **Status:** Imprisoned; on hunger strike since May 18, 2026 (most recent reporting August 2026)
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Media Profile & Archive: Cong Wei — Media Profile & Archive