Xu Na, Former 1989 Student and Beijing Falun Gong Practitioner Sentenced to Eight Years, Spends Her 58th Birthday in Prison

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On November 8, 2026, this outlet learned that Xu Na, a former 1989 student and Beijing Falun Gong practitioner who was sentenced to eight years, is spending her 58th birthday in prison today.

After posting some photos of the domestic COVID-19 outbreak during the pandemic, Xu Na was arrested by police at her home on July 19, 2020. She was sentenced to eight years on January 14, 2022. On September 20, 2023, she was transferred from the Dongcheng District Detention Center in Beijing to the dispatch center at Tianhe Prison, and around November of that year she was transferred to the Third Ward of Beijing Women's Prison.

Xu Na: Also known as Xu Na, female, born November 8, 1968, from Changchun, Jilin Province; a witness to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a student who sat in and went on hunger strike in the square, an independent painter, artist, and poet in Beijing, a Falun Gong practitioner, and a prisoner of conscience in China.

From 1987 to 1991, she studied directing for literature and the arts at Beijing Broadcasting Institute (now renamed Communication University of China). After graduating, disappointed with the realities of the time, she refused to enter the radio and television system and instead turned to writing poetry. She later studied art and became an artist able to hold exhibitions independently. She once described herself as a poet and devoted herself to creating a large number of outstanding poems, selecting and compiling them in 1993 and submitting the manuscript to Lijiang Publishing House, which published the collection under the title Hidden Honey. In 1994, she shifted her interest and energy to painting. In 1997, she actively participated in the “Toward the New Century—Chinese Young Artists’ Oil Painting Exhibition,” organized by the China Oil Painting Society, and the China Art Exhibition, organized by the Ministry of Culture. During this period, in pursuit of freedom of belief, she became a devoted Falun Gong practitioner and was subsequently subjected to merciless crackdown and persecution by the Beijing authorities.

In 2001, the Beijing authorities sentenced her to five years in prison for the crime of believing in a heretical religion. She was released after completing her sentence in 2006.

In 2007, she returned to painting and again participated in the China Oil Painting Society’s “First Chinese Young Artists’ Hundred-Person Oil Painting Exhibition”; her work Still Life received an award for outstanding work. In February 2008, she and her husband, Yu Zhou (then a well-known musician in independent circles), were suddenly arrested together by Beijing police and detained at the Tongzhou Detention Center in Beijing. A few days later, her husband Yu Zhou suddenly died in detention; the cause is unknown. The Beijing authorities said Yu Zhou died from a hunger strike or diabetes, but the true cause of his death remains a mystery. Several months later, the Tongzhou District Court in Beijing sentenced her to three years in prison for “the crime of heretical religion.” After her release in 2011, she continued painting and, in 2012, held a solo exhibition at the Xiwu Gallery in Beijing and participated in an art exhibition in Beijing and Taipei.

On July 19, 2020, she was again taken away and detained by police from the Konggang Police Station in Shunyi District, Beijing, along with 12 other Falun Gong practitioners. Her home was ransacked and some electronic devices were taken. On July 26 of that year, Beijing’s Dongcheng District police changed her status to criminal detention on suspicion of “the crime of undermining the implementation of the law” and held her at the Dongcheng District Detention Center in Beijing. On September 1 of that year, the Dongcheng District Procuratorate in Beijing formally approved her arrest on the same charge, alleging that she and others had posted photos related to the domestic COVID-19 outbreak and information about their Falun Gong beliefs during the pandemic, and that their words and actions were therefore illegal. The case files for her and several others were subsequently transferred by Dongcheng District police to the Dongcheng District Procuratorate in preparation for prosecution. After verification, however, the procuratorate found that her case had “insufficient evidence” and returned the files twice for further investigation. From January 14 to 16, 2022, her case was heard and sentenced at the Dongcheng District Court in Beijing. She was ultimately sentenced to eight years in prison for “using a heretical organization to undermine the implementation of the law,” fined 20,000 yuan, and deprived of political rights for one year. She and the others disagreed and said they would appeal. On May 18, 2023, the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court upheld the original sentence on appeal; her sentence runs until July 18, 2028.

She was later transferred to Class 10 of the Third Division of Beijing Women’s Prison to serve her sentence, but her family’s visitation rights were revoked and she was not allowed visits for a long time. In early 2024, she was reportedly suddenly sent back to the Dongcheng District Detention Center in Beijing because the relevant departments wanted to add to her sentence and persecute her on a new pretext; she was later returned to Beijing Women’s Prison. She is currently serving her sentence in the Third Ward of Beijing Women’s Prison (No. 3 Runhe Lane, Huifeng Street, Qingfeng Road, Tiantanghe, Daxing District, Beijing; postal code: 102609).