Classification: Falun Gong practitioner from Taiyuan, Shanxi; sentenced to ten years in prison in 2019; reported in custody as of August 2026.
Arrest and trial
Sun Zhifen (孙志芬) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, arrested in 2018 and sentenced to ten years in prison. Police from the Yingze district branch of the Taiyuan public security bureau took Sun Zhifen from her home on June 25, 2018, together with eight other elderly Falun Gong practitioners, including Wang Suping. On April 2, 2019, the Taiyuan Yingze District Court tried all nine together. Defense lawyers argued at the trial that the evidence had been fabricated after the arrests and that the searches and detentions had been conducted without warrants.
Sentencing
In 2019, the court sentenced Sun Zhifen to ten years’ imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 yuan. The charge was not publicly documented. The rights database records her prison term as running through June 24, 2028. She is recorded as in custody as of August 31, 2026.
Note on the sentence length: the 2026 monthly prisoner roster places Sun Zhifen in its eleven-year sentenced group; independent case records — the CHRD prisoners-of-conscience database, the Minghui victim library, and the published profile of her co-defendant Wang Suping — record a ten-year term. This profile uses the ten-year figure as the verified sentence.
Note on a namesake: a 2008 Minghui report about a Shuangcheng City (Heilongjiang) Sun Zhifen Falun Gong case with an 11-year sentence from the 1999–2008 era documents a different person — temporally incompatible with the 2018 Taiyuan arrest — and must not be attached to this case.
Sources: Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Prisoners of Conscience database record 孙志芬 / “SUN ZHI FEN” (entered 2019-12-18); Minghui victim library, “孙志芬” victim profile (library.minghui.org); FreeChina.live, Wang Suping Person Profile; Rights Defense Network (维权网), Issue 131 monthly prisoner report, August 31, 2026.
Media profile & archive: Media archive for Sun Zhifen (孙志芬)