Zhong Yimei (钟以美)
Zhong Yimei (钟以美), born January 20, 1980, is a Falun Gong practitioner from Bijie City, Guizhou Province, and a documented mainland China political prisoner. She was a teacher at the Bijie City Vocational Higher Secondary School before losing her job following her first prison sentence.
According to the Chinese Political Prisoner Database (CHRD) and a case report by Minghui, Zhong was arrested on June 25, 2020, by police from the Qixingguan Public Security Bureau, who also searched her home. After about three years in custody, she was sentenced by a local court to seven years in prison. Her exact charge has not been publicly reported. The sentence runs to June 2027.
Zhong’s punishment history is long. Per Minghui: in January 2011 she was arrested at her school by “610” police after her school principal reported her to the domestic security division; on May 31, 2011 she was tried by the Bijie City court, sentenced in September 2011 to five years, and imprisoned on November 8, 2011 at the Guizhou No. 1 Women’s Prison. She reports having been tortured in prison — including sleep deprivation, cold-water pouring, and beatings — to force her to renounce her practice. Her father died the day after she was taken into prison. In 2015 she filed a lawsuit against former leader Jiang Zemin over the Falun Gong crackdown, and reports being harassed and robbed by police in the subsequent campaign.
Status: Reported serving a seven-year sentence with a term ending in June 2027. The charge and detention location for the current sentence have not been publicly reported. Current status is as documented at the time of the cited sources; any change should be verified against fresh reporting.
Arrest, sentencing, detention-location, torture account, and prior-punishment details are sourced to Minghui (a Falun Gong-affiliated outlet) and the CHRD database entry; the exact charge remains unreported.
For a chronology of media reports on Zhong Yimei’s case, see: Zhong Yimei (钟以美) — Media Archive.