Chinese prisoners local group is trying to free

Huang Qi 黃琦

Huang has been in custody since June 10, 2008. He was suspected by police of "illegally holding state secrets". His family said he had been arrested because of news posted on his website which chiefly reports on the organization of humanitarian aid on the Sichuan province earthquake of May 12, 2008.

Huang Qi founded the website 64Tianwang in June, 1998 which posts news about missing people and human rights. Huang was arrested in June 2000 and sentenced in May 2003 to five years for "subversion". He was released on June 4, 2005 after completing his first sentence.

The editor of the website www.64Tianwang.com, Zhang Guo Ting, said it was possible that the case was linked to the latest article posted by Huang Qi about the arrest of a retired professor from the Technology University of the south-West, Zheng Hongling, aged 53 for "divulging news abroad".

Sun Lin孫林

Sun, a journalist better known by the pen-name Jie Mu, has been sentenced to four-year prison sentence in the eastern city of Nanjing on June 27, 2008.

Sun and his wife He Fang were arrested on May 30, 2007. Before the arrest Sun was very active in reporting civil rights incidents in Nanjing and other regions in China. He Fang helped in video editing and interviewing.

In March, 2007, SUN was visited by police after he reported a driver beaten up by city uniformed officers. SUN was warned to stop reporting for Boxun. Sun did not stop and continued to report as he insisted that he has the right to report as a Chinese citizen.

During questioning, the police asked him about his journalistic activities and told him he had been arrested for refusing to stop writing articles for Boxun, a Chinese-language news website based abroad. (http://news.boxun.com/). His wife, He Fang, who also contributes to Boxun, was released after being given a suspended prison sentence. The verdict was issued in a hearing held in the absence of Sun's family and lawyer as they had not been told it was going to take place.

Boxun issued a statement saying Sun Lin had been punished for his work as a citizen journalist, above all for his video reports.

Qi Chonghuai喬崇懷

Journalist Qi was sentenced to four years in prison on May 13, 2008 the day after the devastating earthquake in Sichuan province. He was arrested on June 25, 2007 after criticizing corruption in Tengzhou, Shandong province.

Qi was charged with fraud and extorting money. Qi worked for Fazhi Zaoboa (Legal Rule Morning Post), a newspaper owned by the Justice Ministry. He had been a journalist for various media outlets for 13 years.

Hu Jia 胡佳

Hu and his wife Zeng Jinyan are AIDS activist and environmentalists. They are an optimistic and determined couple with an infant daughter and have hardly left their home since they were put under house arrest in May 2007. Plainclothes police constantly patrol outside. They have made a documentary about this experience called "Prisoners of Freedom City."

They have been activists since the 1990s. Hu is involved in AIDS prevention and helping AIDS/HIV sufferers. Hu is also an environmentalist. They have used the Internet to alert the international community about the damaging effects on the Chinese people in the preparations for the Olympic Games. As the Olympic Games approach, they have become the symbol of the peaceful battle to expand human rights in their country.

A score of police went to their home on 27 December 2007, cut off Internet and phone connections and arrested Hu. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on 3 April 2008 by the Beijing people's intermediate court for "inciting subversion" for writing three articles for a foreign-based website and giving interviews to foreign journalists.

Zeng Jinyan continues to be under surveillance.

Yang Chunlin 楊春林

Yang Chunlin is a peasant land rights activist and the leader of the "We want human rights not Olympic Games" campaign. His petition demanding redress for farmland taken from the farmers by officials for development was signed by thousands of signatures. He posted the letter on the internet with the title, "We want human rights, not the Olympics."

Yang Chunlin's family has been threatened and he has been sentenced to five years in prison followed by two years without civic rights by an intermediate court in the northeastern city of Jiamusi on March 24, 2008.

He has been charged with inciting subversion of state authority. According to Yang Chunlin's defense attorney, much of the nearly five-hour trial session was spent arguing about whether Yang's Olympic protest slogan counted as subversion. His attorney argued that the land the farmers lost had been seized illegally, taken without the permission of the Cabinet as required by regulations.

Chen Guangcheng 陳光誠

Chen, a blind self-taught lawyer aged 36, was put under house arrest in September 2005 after defending the inhabitants of Linyi against a town council that was running a program of late term enforced abortions and sterilization in violation of China's one-child policy. He was honored in Time magazine as "2006's Top 100 People Who Shape Our World"

On the eve of his trial, all three of his lawyers were detained. None of them were allowed in the courtroom. He was sentenced to four years and three months in prison in August 2006 for "destroying public property" and "associating with criminals to disturb road traffic." The sentence was confirmed in January 2007 despite irregularities during his trial. He was beaten and tortured by fellow prisoners in June 2007 and deprived of medical treatment. He staged a hunger strike in protest.

Shi Tao 師濤

Shi worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News). He was convicted in April, 2005 on a charge of "illegally divulging state secrets abroad" on the basis of information provided by Yahoo! to the Chinese police. He was accused of sending to foreign-based websites the text of a message which authorities had sent to his newspaper warning journalists of action they should or should not take on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Shi admitted sending the message but disputed authorities' claim that it was top secret. Shi was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Yang Zili楊子立

Yang Zili is a Beijing University graduate. He had posted articles on his website Yang Zili's Garden of Ideas calling for more democracy. He has also criticized repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and the economic plight of the peasantry.

He was arrested in March 2001 as he left his home in Beijing and in May 2003 was sentenced to eight years in prison for alleged subversion. The sentence was confirmed on appeal in November 2003.