Xu Xinrui (徐欣蕊) — Person Profile
Xu Xinrui (徐欣蕊) is a woman from Chengdu, Sichuan Province, who has been held in a psychiatric hospital for more than eight years without trial, according to investigative reporting and China’s political-prisoner monitoring records. The Rights Defense Network’s (维权网) monthly political-prisoners report (Issue 131, August 31, 2026) lists her among detainees held without trial in Sichuan, recording her as in custody as of that date.
The case
Xu, about 44 years old in 2025, worked at the library of the Oil Community (石油社区) in Chengdu’s Chenghua District. In around 2017, she filed a real-name report accusing the community’s Party secretary and staff members of gambling during work hours. According to investigative accounts, police and community staff then forcibly sent her to the Chengdu Dekang psychiatric hospital. She has remained there since, with no trial and no sentence.
In November 2025, an independent investigator reached Xu by phone. She described being forced to take psychiatric medication every day, being tied to the bed when she refused, and undergoing electroconvulsive treatment as punishment, and she pleaded for help. Hospital staff said she was eligible for discharge but that only the community or police who had sent her could take her out, according to the reporting. Lawyers who visited the police station, the civil affairs bureau, and the municipal public security bureau that month received no substantive answers.
Status and evidentiary limits
As of August 31, 2026, the Rights Defense Network’s Issue 131 report records 徐欣蕊 in custody in the detained-without-trial Sichuan group. The Chenghua District government issued findings in December 2025 denying that Xu had worked at the community library, saying she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia by the Chengdu Fourth People’s Hospital, and rejecting the claim that her hospitalization was retaliation for her report; investigators and rights researchers dispute that account. The two narratives are irreconcilable on key points, and this profile presents both as reported — the truth of the diagnosis and the hospitalization decision cannot be independently verified from outside. There is no charge, trial, sentence, or release date to document; the detention is administrative/medical in form. The forced-hospitalization date is inconsistently reported (March 2016 vs. 2017); the gambling allegation against the community officials was never publicly investigated and is reported as Xu’s account, not established fact.
Media Profile & Archive: 徐欣蕊 — Media Profile & Archive