Who she is
Zhang Xiaohua (张晓华) is a retired Hubei University librarian from Wuhan, Hubei Province, born in 1950, who practices Falun Gong. According to the Minghui library, which documents the persecution of Falun Gong, she has been detained by the authorities more than fourteen times since July 1999 for her beliefs — held in detention centers, a labor camp, a “brainwashing center,” and the Wuhan Women’s Prison, and sentenced once before, to four years in 2014.
Earlier persecution
Minghui’s victim profile records a long history: in October 2000 she was seized while posting “Falun Dafa is good” slogans and sent to the Hewan labor camp for a year and a half; in 2004 she was taken to the Tangxunhu brainwashing center; in 2009 she was detained in Zhongxiang; in 2013 she was seized twice in Wuhan and held in detention and at the Yangyuan brainwashing center. On February 26, 2014, the Caidian District Court sentenced her to four years; that July she was taken to the Wuhan Women’s Prison, where Minghui says she was held in a section set aside for Falun Gong practitioners. She was released on September 18, 2017.
The current case
On November 25, 2023, Zhang, then about 75, was at the home of a fellow practitioner in Wuhan’s Wuchang district studying Falun Gong writings with eight others when police broke in and took all nine to police stations; she and another elderly practitioner were picked up by family that night. Around the 2024 Lunar New Year, she was searched and taken again, and placed in a Wuhan “brainwashing center.” In February 2024, officers of the Xujiapeng police station raided her home in the Liujahe residential area and took her into secret custody; police would not tell her family where she was held. She was later moved through the Ankang Hospital facility and, Minghui reports, held in secret at a medical facility under the Wuhan No. 1 Detention Center.
On February 11, 2025, it was learned that a local court had sentenced her late the previous year to four years in prison, with a fine of 10,000 yuan. The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) prisoners-of-conscience database lists her four-year term as running to February 2028, with her place of detention unknown, and notes that her family is still not permitted to visit her.
The Rights Defense Network (维权网) monthly custody report dated August 31, 2026 lists Zhang Xiaohua among prisoners reported as serving four-year sentences and currently in custody. No independently verified information about her present condition or whereabouts is available beyond these dated reports.
What is not known
The formal criminal charge, the written court judgment, and her current place of detention — all are listed as unknown in the available records. The precise sentencing date in late 2024 is not given.
Sources and media records
Full media archive and source record for Zhang Xiaohua
- Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Prisoners of Conscience database — Zhang Xiaohua (张晓华) record
- Minghui victim library, “张晓华” profile (victim/i76666.htm)
- Rights Defense Network Issue 131 monthly report (August 31, 2026) — 判刑4年 custody listing