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Feng Xiaoyan, Deputy Investigator of the People’s Congress of Linyi, Shandong, is Forced to Take Schizophrenia Medications for Distributing Democracy Leaflets

June 15, 2020

April 28, 2020, Xiaoyan Feng(丰晓燕), the deputy investigator of the Research Office of the People’s Congress of Linyi City, Shandong Province, distributed democracy leaflets in Wangfujing, Beijing, advocating for democratic reform and the reelection of the Chinese president, and opposing social injustice. On April 29, Feng was forcibly taken to the No. 4 People’s Hospital of Linyi to be treated as a schizophrenic patient. She remains in detention. 


Feng Xiaoyan, Deputy Investigator of the People’s Congress of Linyi, Shandong, is Forced to Take Schizophrenia Medications for Distributing Democracy Leaflets

April 28, Xiaoyan Feng(丰晓燕), the deputy investigator of the Research Office of the People’s Congress of Linyi City, Shandong Province, distributed democracy leaflets in Wangfujing, Beijing, advocating for democratic reform and reelection of the Chinese president, and opposing social injustice. She was detained in Wangfujing police precinct under suspicion of disturbing public order.

On the following day, April 29, Feng was transferred to the custody of the government of Linyi. Some two dozen police from the Yucai Road precinct, Beijing Road, Linyi City, forcibly took Feng to the No. 4 People’s Hospital and had her admitted as a psychiatric patient, where she was not given a psychiatric examination. The police officers separated Feng and her daughter, slapped them in their face. They also stripped Feng naked and dragged her, who is suffering from an herniated disc, cross the floor.

On May 4, Feng told her daughter that the hospital had been forcing her to take medications. In the beginning, Feng was thinking and speaking normally. But after taking the medications, she has had difficulty speaking, thinking, and sleeping. Her tongue became swollen, and her body ached. According to Feng, the doctors and nurses in the hospital were brutal to her. And they told Feng that they had never heard of Freud's psychoanalysis or the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine.

May 7, the hospital allowed her daughter, who threatened suicide, to a visit Feng. Feng said during the visit: “I would rather die standing; I will never live kneeling. True nobility is not measured by these persecutions and humiliation.”

May 15, the hospital denied that Feng was no long being there. The Linyi Municipal Public Security Bureau said that the matter was being handled by the city’s Health Commission. The Linyi Health Commission asserted the procedure used by No. 4 People’s Hospital in taking in Feng was proper. The Linyi Municipal Discipline Inspection Commission determined that there had been no abuse of power. The Linyi People's Congress said it had no jurisdiction over Feng. And the municipal government of Linyi, the National Bureau of Letters and Calls, and Central Discipline Inspection Commission of China—all did not respond to submitted complaints.

On May 17, Feng’s daughter who had been trying to rescue Feng was herself threatened to be detained in No.4 People’s Hospital. She was then put under house arrest and surveillance.

Feng graduated from Shandong Normal University, majoring in journalism. She participated in the 1989 Democracy Movement. In 2019, she publicly supported the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong. Because of her opposition to the injustice perpetrated by the local government, she was attacked by thugs organized by the government, who injured her back. Because of her activism, Feng had not been promoted in years, allowed to go abroad, permitted to take qualifying exams for higher positions, or allowed to resign from the Communist Party or her position. Feng wrote in 2016, “You don’t have any power. You could only wait in the biting wind. You don’t have any power to vote them out.”