Annie Yang, a graduate of the Beijing Institute of Technology University is a former labour camp inmate and Falun Gong Practitioner. In 2005, she was arrested for her involvement in the Falun Gong spiritual movement, members of which were persecuted by the Chinese communist party beginning 1999. She was sent to a forced labour camp for two years without a trial where she was tortured and deprived of basic human rights. Following international pressure, Annie Yang was released six months early and moved to the UK in 2006 and has not been able to go back to China since.