Jailed Olympic critics

Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan (c) 2008 CHRD

Hu Jia is a Beijing-based human rights activist who has openly challenged the Chinese government for its failure to honor its promise to promote human rights made when it bid to host the Olympic Games, notably in an open letter titled “The Real China and the Olympics,” cosigned with another activist on September 10, 2007. Detained on December 27, 2007, and formally arrested one month later, Hu was sentenced in April to three-and-a-half years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” His wife Zeng Jinyan and their baby daughter Qianci remain under house arrest in Beijing. Prior to his arrest, Hu was particularly involved with AIDS advocacy in China, in his capacity as executive director of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education.

• Yang Chunlin, a land rights activist sentenced to five years in prison on March 24, 2008, on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.” In 2007, Yang initiated a petition, ultimately signed by more than 10,000 people, titled "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics," protesting illegal land seizures by officials. Yang’s trial on February 19 lasted less than a day and was marred by numerous procedural flaws.
• Ye Guozhu, a housing rights activist serving a four-year prison sentence for seeking to organize protests against forced evictions ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2003 he was forcibly evicted from his home in Beijing—like thousands of other residents of the capital—to make way for Olympic construction projects. Soon after seeking permission in August 2004 to hold a 10,000-person march for other evictees in September of that year, he was arrested on "suspicion of disturbing social order." On December 18, 2004, Ye was sentenced to four years in prison.

Other cases of human rights activists in jail or under house arrest are described on this web page: http://china.hrw.org/olympic_prisoners