Zhou Hongliang / 周洪亮
Classification: Falun Gong practitioner; prisoner of conscience; sentenced to three years and six months. Recorded sentence-end date: September 9, 2026; current status unconfirmed.
Background
Zhou Hongliang (周洪亮) is a Falun Gong practitioner from Suizhou City, Hubei Province. According to Minghui, a Falun Gong-affiliated media outlet, he lived in the Houli residential area of the Tieshu community in Xicheng, Zengdu District, Suizhou, and worked at a local shopping mall.
March 2023: arrest and home search
On the afternoon of March 10, 2023, Zhou Hongliang was arrested at the shopping mall where he worked by four plainclothes and one uniformed police officer, then taken home and subjected to a home search, according to Minghui. He was subsequently held in criminal detention, formally arrested, and prosecuted. Minghui reports that when the officers moved to take him away, he said he needed to care for his 80-year-old mother, who could not care for herself, and that officers struck him.
Detention, trial, and three-and-a-half-year sentence
Zhou Hongliang was held at the Suizhou Detention Center for one year and one month. On April 19, 2024, he was transferred to Shayang Prison in Hubei to serve his sentence, according to Minghui and the Chinese Human Rights Defenders political-prisoner database. Minghui’s April 29, 2024 report stated that he had been tried (a hearing was reported around September 4, 2023) and sentenced, though the sentence length was not yet known to the outlet at that time. By May 2025, the sentence was reported as three years and six months, with the term ending September 9, 2026, per the CHRD database record (entered June 17, 2024). The exact criminal charge of record is unknown.
Status and evidentiary limits
The Rights Defense Network’s monthly reports on detained political and conscience prisoners (Issue 131, August 31, 2026) list 周洪亮 in the group of prisoners “sentenced to three years and six months” — consistent with the 3-year-6-month sentence. The recorded sentence-end date of September 9, 2026, has passed; his current status is unconfirmed and is not inferred here. This profile does not merge Zhou Hongliang with any other person of a similar name — notably not with Zhao Hongliang (赵宏亮), a different-surnamed individual.
For the documented media and organizational records on this case, see: Zhou Hongliang (周洪亮) — Media Profile & Archive.