Zuo Xiuyun (左秀云) — Person Profile

Zuo Xiuyun (左秀云) — Person Profile

Zuo Xiuyun (左秀云) is a former kindergarten teacher from Fuzhou, Fujian Province, who has been detained and imprisoned repeatedly in China for her practice of Falun Gong — five prison terms totalling more than twenty years, according to reports from Falun Gong monitoring organizations. Minghui.org reports that she was arrested on May 21, 2024 by officers of the Jin’an District Public Security Bureau domestic-security team after being spotted dropping a letter believed to contain Falun Gong information into a mailbox; she was tried by the Minqing County Court on December 13, 2024, and in October 2025 the court sentenced her to three years and five months with a 10,000-yuan fine. She appealed, and in December 2025 the Fuzhou City Intermediate Court upheld the verdict. She was reported transferred to the Fujian Provincial Women’s Prison around the 2026 Chinese New Year. The Rights Defense Network’s (维权网) monthly political-prisoners report (Issue 131, August 31, 2026) classifies her as in custody as of that date.

The case

On May 21, 2024, Zuo — then in her 60s — was arrested by officers of the Jin’an District Public Security Bureau domestic-security team after being spotted dropping a letter believed to contain Falun Gong information into a mailbox. She was beaten in the detention center, suffering blood in her urine and abdominal bruising, according to Minghui.org. Her case was sent to the Minqing County procuratorate; she was tried by the Minqing County Court on December 13, 2024. The procuratorate withdrew the case for supplementary evidence, she was tried a second time, and the court postponed its ruling three times. In October 2025 the Minqing County Court sentenced her to three years and five months with a 10,000-yuan fine. She appealed; in December 2025 the Fuzhou City Intermediate Court upheld the verdict. The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong adds that her lawyer entered a not-guilty plea and Zuo made her own not-guilty statement at trial, that the procuratorate withdrew the case once for supplementary evidence and the court returned the file twice, and that three postponements preceded sentencing. She was reported transferred to the Fujian Provincial Women’s Prison around the 2026 Chinese New Year. Falun Gong (法轮功), also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline combining meditation exercises with moral teachings centered on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance; it has been suppressed in China since July 1999.

Earlier targeting

Zuo worked as an outstanding kindergarten teacher in the Fujian railway system — at the Railroad Bureau kindergarten in Yong’an City, Fujian — before losing her job as a result of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Her husband divorced her in 2003 during the first period of persecution. She is the sister of Zuo Fusheng, also a Falun Gong practitioner; her brother, a military veteran, served a six-year prison term for practicing Falun Gong, was blinded in one eye under torture in prison and lost sight in the other eye after release, and depended on Zuo for daily care. Zuo was first arrested in 2000 and sentenced to three years in prison, held at the Fujian Provincial Women’s Prison; released in late 2003, she was arrested again on the evening of June 2, 2004 — eight months after release — by agents of the Yong’an City and Sanming City 610 Offices, and secretly sentenced to six years. She described, in a first-person account published in 2010, being hung by her handcuffed wrists for seven days and nights, shocked with electric batons, deprived of sleep for more than twenty days, force-fed, and denied family visits. She was released in June 2010. On December 16, 2011, Zuo was taken away by officers of the Fuzhou Public Security Bureau’s National Security Brigade after she repeatedly petitioned authorities to release her brother Zuo Fusheng, who had been arrested in January 2011. Held at the First Detention Center of Fuzhou City, she staged a hunger strike; in March 2012 she was reported in critical condition at the Fuzhou Armed Police Hospital. She was later sentenced to three and a half years, and her mother died in April 2015, less than two months before Zuo completed this third term. After serving a five-year term, Zuo was released and arrested a sixth time on June 19, 2021, amid the authorities’ “zero-out” campaign ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s centenary.

Status and evidentiary limits

Zuo is serving her fifth reported prison term (reported in custody, December 2025 – early 2026). Custody, trial, and torture details in this profile are reported by Falun Gong–affiliated outlets — Minghui.org, the Falun Dafa Information Center, and the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong — and are recorded as reported by them; no independent confirmation or official statement from Chinese authorities was found, and no coverage by established international media (AP, Reuters, BBC, RFA, etc.) was found. The organizations’ legal characterizations of the proceedings (e.g., “illegal”) are the organizations’ own; torture accounts are Zuo Xiuyun’s own testimony as published. Exact start dates of the third and fourth sentences were not reported: the three-and-a-half-year term is placed at 2011/2012–2015 and the five-year term at approximately 2016–2021 on the basis of reported release dates. A minor timeline-sequencing ambiguity is flagged: Minghui’s October 2025 report said no verdict had been announced yet as of that report, while the January 2026 report and the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong bulletin place sentencing in October 2025 with the intervening retrials and postponements — materially consistent. No official Chinese court record or state-media report naming Zuo Xiuyun was found. Family members’ identifying details beyond the brother already named in sources are not published, and no unverified exact release-date arithmetic is given. Named officials in the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong bulletin are accused by that advocacy organization only; none are presented as convicted of wrongdoing.

Media Profile & Archive: Zuo Xiuyun (左秀云) — Media Profile & Archive