Li Bifeng | |
---|---|
Native name | 李必丰 |
Born | 1964 Mianyang, Sichuan, China |
Occupation | Activist, poet, writer |
Notable works | Die Flügel des Himmels(lit. 'The Wings of Heaven') |
Li Bifeng (born 1964 in Mianyang, [1] [2] Sichuan, China) is a Sichuanese activist, poet, and Christian. [3] [4] He has been imprisoned since 1998.
The poet and campaigner for democracy, Li Bifeng, wrote a report in 1998 about a courageous sit-in of a group of textile workers on a Chinese highway. He passed the report to human rights organizations abroad. In 1989, he was arrested and sentenced to 5 years because of "economic crimes", after he had taken part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and had been on the run for half a year.
After being released from prison in 1994, Li joined an "unofficial church" and established an organization of conscience-based care for Chinese with fellow Christians to conduct written reports on the living conditions of laid-off workers, women, and children across the country, providing information and acting on both domestic and international levels. In 1998, he was arrested again and sentenced to 7 years in prison for "economic fraud". [1]
In November 2012, 48-year-old Li was sentenced to another twelve years in prison with no plausible reason or evidence and despite worldwide protests. The authorities accused him of helping his friend Liao Yiwu, the writer and winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2012, when he fled to Germany.
On 4 June 2013, the Berlin International Literature Festival held a worldwide reading for Li Bifeng. [5]
Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China occupying most of the Sichuan Basin and the easternmost part of the Tibetan Plateau between the Jinsha River on the west, the Daba Mountains in the north and the Yungui Plateau to the south. Sichuan's capital city is Chengdu. The population of Sichuan stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors are Qinghai to the northwest, Gansu to the north, Shaanxi to the northeast, Chongqing to the east, Guizhou to the southeast, Yunnan to the south, and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west.
Mianyang is the second largest prefecture-level city of Sichuan province in Southwestern China. Located in north-central Sichuan covering an area of 20,281 square kilometres (7,831 sq mi) consisting of Jiangyou, a county-level city, five counties, and three urban districts. Its total population was 4,868,243 people at the 2020 Chinese census, of whom 2,232,865 live in its built-up area made of three urban districts.
Suining (simplified Chinese: 遂宁; traditional Chinese: 遂寧; Sichuanese Pinyin: Xu4nin2; Sichuanese pronunciation: ; pinyin: Sùiníng; Wade–Giles: Sui-ning) is a prefecture-level city of eastern Sichuan province in Southwest China. According to the 2020 census, Suining had a population of 2,814,196, with 1,612,641 living in built up(or metro) areas.
Dazhou is a prefecture-level city in the northeast corner of Sichuan province, China, bordering Shaanxi to the north and Chongqing to the east and south. As of 2020 census, Dazhou was home to 5,385,422 inhabitants whom 1,850,869 lived in the built-up area made of 2 urban districts.
Sichuanese or Szechwanese (simplified Chinese: 四川话; traditional Chinese: 四川話; Sichuanese Pinyin: Si4cuan1hua4; pinyin: Sìchuānhuà; Wade–Giles: Szŭ4-ch'uan1-hua4), also called Sichuanese/Szechwanese Mandarin (simplified Chinese: 四川官话; traditional Chinese: 四川官話; pinyin: Sìchuān Guānhuà), is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing, which was part of Sichuan Province until 1997, and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces, such as Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and Shaanxi. Although "Sichuanese" is often synonymous with the Chengdu-Chongqing dialect, there is still a great amount of diversity among the Sichuanese dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible with each other. In addition, because Sichuanese is the lingua franca in Sichuan, Chongqing and part of Tibet, it is also used by many Tibetan, Yi, Qiang and other ethnic minority groups as a second language.
Li Zhi is a Chinese dissident. He worked as a civil servant in Dazhou. He was arrested in 2003 for his postings of information on local corruption on the Internet.
Liao Yiwu is a Chinese author, reporter, musician, and poet. He is a critic of China's Communist Party, for which he was imprisoned in 1990. His books, several of which are collections of interviews with ordinary people from the lower rungs of Chinese society, were published in Taiwan and Hong Kong but are banned in mainland China; some have been translated into Spanish, English, French, German, Polish and Czech. He has been living in Germany since April 2011.
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Liu Xia is a Chinese painter, poet, and photographer. Liu Xia was under effective house arrest in China as her husband, Liu Xiaobo, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. She remained under house arrest until 10 July 2018, when she was allowed to travel to Germany for medical treatment.
The 2011 crackdown on dissidents in China refers to the arrest of dozens of mainland Chinese rights lawyers, activists and grassroots agitators in a response to the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests. Since the protests, at least 54 Chinese activists have been arrested or detained by authorities in the biggest crackdown on dissent since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Since the start of the protests in mid-February 2011, human rights groups have claimed that more than 54 people have been arrested by authorities, some of whom have been charged with crimes. Among those arrested are bloggers who criticise the government such as Ai Weiwei, lawyers who pursue cases against the government, and human rights activists.
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Li Chongxi is a former Chinese politician. From 2013 to 2014, Li served as chairman of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a mostly ceremonial legislative consultation body. Prior to that, Li served as the deputy party secretary of Sichuan province. Li Chongxi has been linked to disgraced former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang.
Li Chengyun is a former Chinese politician who served as Vice-Governor of Sichuan from 2008 to 2011. He was convicted of corruption in 2017 and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Li Fengping (1912–2008) was a politician of the People's Republic of China. He was born in Tongliang District, Chongqing, which was then part of Sichuan Province. He attended the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, he served in the New Fourth Army. He was governor of Zhejiang from 1979 to 1983 and later Chairman of the Zhejiang People's Congress. He was a delegate to the 5th National People's Congress.
Yu Zhijian was a Chinese dissident from Hunan Province, known for his leading role in 1989 Mao portrait vandalism incident. Yu Zhijian, Yu Dongyue and Lu Decheng vandalized Mao Zedong's portrait in Tiananmen Square on May 23, 1989. He was charged with counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement, counter-revolutionary sabotage, writing reactionary slogans, and destruction of state property, and received life imprisonment. After being granted parole and released in 2000, Yu and his family fled to the U.S. in 2009. On March 30, 2017, Yu died of diabetes at the age of 53.
Wang Jiujiang is a Sichuanese painter whose work is mostly based on the landscapes of Sichuan and Tibet, by reinterpreting the traditional shan shui style. He is classified as a member of national first-class artists.
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