### Feng Xiaoyan (丰晓燕)
Feng Xiaoyan is a former deputy investigator in the Research Office of the Linyi Municipal People’s Congress in Shandong Province who was forcibly confined in a psychiatric hospital in 2020 after distributing pro-democracy leaflets in Beijing.
#### Background
Feng graduated from Shandong Normal University with a degree in journalism and worked for years inside the Linyi People’s Congress system. She took part in the 1989 democracy movement and publicly supported Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement in 2019.
According to Human Rights in China, Feng’s opposition to injustices committed by the local government made her a target: thugs organized by the government attacked her and injured her back. Her activism blocked her promotion for years, barred her from traveling abroad, kept her from sitting qualifying examinations for higher posts, and her requests to resign from the Communist Party and from her position were refused.
#### The leaflets and the arrest
On April 28, 2020, Feng went to Wangfujing, Beijing’s best-known shopping district, and handed out pamphlets calling for democratic reform — including direct election of the president — and opposing social injustice. Police detained her at the Wangfujing police station on suspicion of “disturbing public order.”
The next day, April 29, she was handed over to Linyi authorities. Some two dozen police officers from the Yucai Road precinct forcibly took her to the No. 4 People’s Hospital of Linyi, a public hospital that houses a mental health center, and had her admitted to the psychiatric ward. According to her daughter Alice, no psychiatric examination was performed. Police separated Feng from her daughter, slapped them both, stripped Feng naked, and dragged her — a woman suffering from a herniated disc — across the floor.
#### Forced medication
Beginning May 4, hospital staff forced Feng to take large quantities of psychotropic drugs three times a day without telling her what they were. She began to have difficulty speaking, thinking, and sleeping; her tongue swelled and her body ached.
On May 7, the hospital allowed her daughter to visit only after the daughter threatened suicide. During the visit Feng told her: “I would rather die standing; I will never live kneeling. True nobility is not measured by these persecutions and humiliations.”
On May 15, the hospital denied that Feng was being held there at all. Complaints filed with the Linyi Public Security Bureau, the municipal Health Commission (which declared the admission procedure proper), the Discipline Inspection Commission (which found no abuse of power), the People’s Congress (which said it had no jurisdiction over her), the municipal government, the National Bureau of Letters and Calls, and the Central Discipline Inspection Commission went unanswered.
On May 17, Feng’s daughter — who had been working to free her mother — was herself threatened with detention in the same hospital and was then placed under house arrest and surveillance.
#### Release, and a second forced admission
After about three months, on July 25, 2020, Feng was released from the hospital. Her daughter said her mother looked terrible: swollen tongue, sluggish thinking, stiff movements, severe back pain. The hospital had prescribed lithium carbonate (used for mania), paliperidone (used for schizophrenia), and quetiapine — all with serious side effects — and she was forced to keep taking them at home.
On August 29, 2020, her husband Yang Guang forced her back into the hospital. Her daughter said Yang had been violent toward her mother for years and that he had sent her to a psychiatric hospital before, fearing her activism would harm his real estate business. She was discharged again a few weeks later, this time prescribed sodium valproate, olanzapine, and lorazepam.
Her daughter has accused the hospital and its staff of violating the Mental Health Law and of illegal detention, intentional harm, and attempted medical murder — claims that have never been independently adjudicated.
#### Current status
Feng is not reported to be in custody. Her whereabouts and condition since 2020 have not been independently confirmed.
#### Sources and further reading
– Safeguard Defenders, “Drugged and Detained: China’s Psychiatric Prisons” (August 2022) — Feng’s case is documented in this investigation of 99+ victims of forced psychiatric hospitalization
– Human Rights in China, “Feng Xiaoyan, Deputy Investigator of the People’s Congress of Linyi, Shandong, is Forced to Take Schizophrenia Medications for Distributing Democracy Leaflets” (April 2020)
– Chinese Human Rights Defenders, “One democracy activist’s detention in mental health facility belies China’s legal reforms” (May 28, 2020)
– Jerome A. Cohen & Chi Yin, “Indefinite Confinement under China’s Mental Health Laws — Another Type of Arbitrary Detention?” (August 2020)
Media Archive & Source Record: Feng Xiaoyan (丰晓燕)