Mr. President Xi Jinping, I’m Liu Xia, citizen of the People’s Republic of China. I have been placed under house arrest in my own home since October, 2010. That deprives me of my personal freedom. However, no one has told me why I have been subjected to house arrest. Thinking about it over and over again, I conclude that, in this country [...] Keep reading »

  According to sources close to him, Du Bin (杜斌), an independent writer, film maker, and formerly a photographer for the New York Times, was confirmed on Sunday to have been criminally detained on May 31 by state security police in Beijing. He was charged with “printing illegal publications” and detained in the detention center of Feng [...] Keep reading »

  Citizen (公民), formerly known as Gong Meng or Open Constitution Initiative, and founded by some of China’s preeminent rights lawyers, is a NGO based in Beijing that provides legal assistance to the disempowered and promotes the New Cititzens’ Movement. Read the original here.  From what we know and have learned, we believe that Yuan [...] Keep reading »

On the morning of May 13, while visiting a black jail in Ziyang, Sichuan province (四川资阳), seven rights lawyers from Beijing and Chengdu were intercepted, beaten and kidnapped by unidentified men. After that their cellphones ceased to answer. Upon learning the news of their colleagues’ encounter, four more lawyers went to Ziyang to help. T [...] Keep reading »

Following earlier detentions in Guangdong and Beijing, on April 27, another ten activists in Xinyu, Jiangxi (江西新余) were taken into police custody for demanding that government officials disclose their assets. Since then, seven of them have been released but Liu Ping (刘萍), Wei Zhongping (魏忠平) and Li Sihua (李思华) are still been [...] Keep reading »

By Xu Zhiyong, Xiao Shu, Teng Biao, et al. April 18, 2013 As of noon today (April 18, Beijing Time), at least seven citizens in Beijing have been criminally detained for demanding asset disclosure by government officials. Around noon today, the family of Mr. Zhao Changqing (赵常青) received a notice that he had been criminally detained. Around e [...] Keep reading »

By Ai Xiaoming, translated by Yaxue Cao Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明) is a professor of Chinese modern literature at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. In recent years she’s best known for her participation in social movements and documentary making. Her work includes Three Days in Wukan (乌坎三日), The Central Plains (中原纪事, about th [...] Keep reading »

In my recent blog “Lock Up and Lock Down” about crackdowns on dissidents and activists during the Two Meetings, I mentioned an incident about a ten-year-old girl whose father is a dissident in Hefei, Anhui (安徽合肥): “In a particularly egregious episode of this year’s clamping down on dissidents, on February 27 in Hefei, Anhui (安徽� [...] Keep reading »

Intimidating, sabotaging the life of, dissidents’ family members is nothing new in China. It has been a time-honored practice of the Chinese government to suppress dissent. After all, Liu Xia has been under house arrest in Beijing for two-and-a-half years now, and her only “crime” is that she’s the wife of Nobel Peace winner Liu Xiaobo, ser [...] Keep reading »