Huang Qi is a Chinese webmaster and human rights activist. He is the co-founder of Tianwang Center for Missing Persons, along with his wife Zeng Li. Initially the mission of the organization was to help counter human trafficking that had become a swelling problem in the late 1990s, but later it was expanded to include campaign against human rights abuse. Huang is also the owner and webmaster of 64tianwang.com, a website originally intended to release news about people who had disappeared in the People's Republic of China.
Hu Jia is a Chinese civil rights activist and noted critic of Chinese Communist Party. His work has focused on the Chinese democracy movement, Chinese environmentalist movement, and HIV/AIDS in the People's Republic of China. Hu is the director of June Fourth Heritage & Culture Association, and he has been involved with AIDS advocacy as the executive director of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education and as one of the founders of the non-governmental organization Loving Source. He has also been involved in work to protect the endangered Tibetan antelope. For his activism, Hu has received awards from several European bodies, such as the Paris City Council and the European Parliament, which awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to him in December 2008.
Alaa Ahmed Seif Abd-El Fattah, known professionally as Alaa Abd El-Fattah, is an Egyptian-British blogger, software developer and a political activist. He has been active in developing Arabic-language versions of software and platforms.
Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by 303 Chinese dissident intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting its name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia. Since its release, more than 10,000 people inside and outside China have signed the charter. After unsuccessful reform efforts in 1989 and 1998 by the Chinese democracy movement, Charter 08 was the first challenge to one-party rule that declared the end of one-party rule to be its goal; it has been described as the first one with a unified strategy.
The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for AIDS victims, environmental damage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment.
During the Maoist era, particularly during the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution, the judicial system of China was often used for political persecution of rivals, and penalties such as jail terms or capital punishment were largely imposed on the authority's political enemies, or anyone who attempted to challenge it. During those times, vague accusations such as "counter-revolutionary", capitalist roader (走资本主义路线), "running dog of the imperialist " (帝国主义走狗) could have had the accused imprisoned, or shot by firing squad. These labels fell out of use following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.
Liu Xianbin, from Suining, Sichuan province, People's Republic of China, is a human rights activist, China Democracy Party organizer, writer and signer of Charter 08.
The 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests, also known as the Greater Chinese Democratic Jasmine Revolution, refer to public assemblies in over a dozen cities in China starting on 20 February 2011, inspired by and named after the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia; the actions that took place at protest sites, and the response by the Chinese government to the calls and action.
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.
Chen Wei is a Chinese dissident and human rights activist. In December 2011, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for inciting subversion.
Ding Mao, born in Mianyang, Sichuan on 9 November 1968, is a Chinese dissident. As a student, he was one of the leaders of the student democracy movement, known through the Tiananmen Square 1989 protest. He became general manager of an investment company, and one of the founders of the unrecognized Social Democratic Party. Mao was recently detained on 19 February 2011, and held at Mianyang Municipal Detention Center before being released into residential surveillance on 2 December 2011.
Zhu Yufu, born 13 February 1953 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, is a political dissident. In 1998, he was one of the founders of the unrecognized Democracy Party of China (DPC). He also founded the "Opposition Party" magazine, carrying articles about the DPC. He is currently under arrest for publishing a poem that directed people to participate in the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests.
On January 8–9, 2013 a trial was held by the People's Court of Nghệ An Province, Vietnam for 14 democracy activists, primarily belonging to the Catholic church, including high-profile blogger Paulus Le Son. All of them were sentenced to 3–13 years in prison on charges of subversion. Many human rights organizations have called this the "largest case of its kind" in Vietnam, and condemned the sentence. Many organizations, including the US Embassy in Vietnam, have called for an immediate release of the dissidents.
Qin Yongmin is a Chinese author, political commentator, human rights activist and co-founder of the Democratic Party of China.
Wu Lebao is a cyber-dissident from Bengbu, Anhui, People's Republic of China. Wu is an active critic of the Chinese government and its foreign influence, and has expressed concerns about the impact on freedom in Australia and other democratic countries during many of his media interviews. He has claimed that the Chinese Students and Scholars Association is directly controlled by Chinese embassies and Chinese government, and that it has intentionally worked to sabotage academic freedom in campuses of Western universities. In 2019, media revealed that Lebao was among one hundred or so dissidents, including Ai Weiwei, 14th Dalai Lama, and Liu Xiaobo, whose name and works are totally forbidden to print in China even for oversea publications.
Hồ Đức Hoà is a community organizer and journalist who has been arrested in Vietnam and sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2013.
Gu Yi, also known as Sulaiman Gu, is a Chinese student dissident and human rights activist. He was interrogated and reprimanded for discussing with Ilham Tohti and other Uyghur dissidents and criticizing China's unfair treatment of its minority citizens in Xinjiang in 2009. Later he went abroad to study Chemistry as a graduate student of Chemistry in the University of Georgia continuing his political activism in terms of writings and demonstrations. He was an enthusiastic supporter of 2014 Hong Kong protests. In May 2015, he became widely-known for authoring and organizing an open letter to fellow students in China on the 26th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Wu Gan is a Chinese blogger and human rights activist from Fuqing, Fujian who uses the internet name "Super Vulgar Butcher" or "Butcher Wu Gan", and is known for his provocative signs and banners in support of his protests. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in December 2017 for subversion of state power, and was last incarcerated in Qingliu Prison in Fujian until his release in May 2023.
Li Qiaochu is a Chinese labor and women's rights activist and researcher on labour issues. She was detained by authorities for four months in the first half of 2020 and again in February 2021, in both cases on national security charges. These were due to her connection with activists, including her partner Xu Zhiyong, who had secretly met in the southeastern city of Xiamen in December 2019 to discuss "democratic transition in China". In February 2024, Li was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for "inciting subversion of state power".
Early Rain Covenant Church is a house church within the Reformed Presbyterian tradition based in the Sichuanese provincial capital city of Chengdu, southwestern China. It was established as Early Rain Blessings Fellowship by Pastor Wang Yi and his wife, Jiang Rong, in their own home in Chengdu, in April 2005. The small congregation has evolved into a house church three years later, and since then it had been variously known as Early Rain Blessings Church, Early Rain Reformed Church and Early Rain Reformed Presbyterian Church before adopting its current name.
