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Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, concludes her visit to China with a disappointing statement that betrays her mandate , as the world’s highest human rights authority, to “promote and protect the enjoyment and full realization, by all people, of all human rights.” Bachelet...

In anticipation of her upcoming visit to China, HRIC joins 59 human rights NGOs around the world in calling upon Michelle Bachelet to improve her office’s approach to addressing China’s human rights abuses. Among the NGOs’ requests are: release the long-delayed OHCHR report on Xinjiang, ensure the...

In the lead-up to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, a Chinese official explicitly warned athletes that, while in China, they would not be free to express themselves. Many of them did voice their concerns—before and after the Games—about human rights violations in China.

Fourteen years ago, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics was critical for Chinese leaders to signal to audiences at home and abroad that China had arrived on the world stage as a powerful, respected global player. With the active participation of the international community,...

(Typical cases that demonstrate the worsening human rights situation in China)

Compiled by Human Rights in China, December 2021

November 24, 2021 (updated) In a joint appeal to the director of Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice and the warden of Shanghai Women's Prison, where citizen journalist Zhang Zhan is serving a four-year sentence and in declining health, 693 individuals, including rights lawyers, clergymen, and...

“FIDH and its member organization HRIC urge the Council and its member states to take urgent actions to address the alarming deterioration of rights and freedoms in the Hong Kong SAR, China. . . .”

Some of these women are lawyers and legal advocates who have chosen the difficult path of rights defense on their own. Others are family members of lawyers and legal advocates targeted by the authorities—who have been compelled to take up rights defense in order to protect their own freedom and...

On June 17, 2021, about 500 police officers raided the newsroom of Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy newspaper. They arrested five top executives, including its Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law. On the same day, the authorities froze HK$18 million ($2.3 million) of the assets of three companies linked...

Inspiration from Hong Kongers prosecuted and sentenced for involvement in the June 4, 2020 candlelight vigil in Victoria Park

[Translation by Human Rights in China] On June 4, 1989, in a time of peace, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, under the leadership and command of the ruling authorities, sent tanks, armored vehicles, and soldiers with live ammunition onto the ten-mile Chang’an Avenue in Beijing. Without...

At the request of Ding Zilin, a founding member of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of survivors and family members of the military crackdown on 1989 Democracy Movement, HRIC posts her letter below. Ding Zilin extends her deep appreciation for international support and humanitarian assistance for the...

In the Joint Appeal, HRIC joins 35 NGOs and labor unions around the world to express grave concerns that the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)—reached between leaders of the two governments in December 2020—“sends a signal that the European Union will push for closer cooperation...

Guo Feixiong ( 郭飞雄 ) , well-known Chinese human rights activist, was stopped at the Shanghai Pudong Airport on January 28 while en route to the United States to care for his ailing wife. The authorities reportedly cited “ suspicion of endangering national security " as the reason. Guo has begun a...

Sharon Hom: “Human rights defenders, as well as all users of social media or technology tools, are trapped between a rock and a hard place—between the manipulation for profit of “surveillance capitalism” and the economic and political constraints of party-state authoritarianism.”

Sharon Hom: “This is the moment to hold the authorities’ feet to the fire, a test, and an opportunity to give Article 4 real teeth to provide rights protections guaranteed in the international obligations of the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong SAR governments.”

On the December 9, at her year-end press conference at the Human Rights Council, UN High Commission for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet spoke out on the serious human rights violations in Xinjiang and expressed concerns regarding what she called the “rapidly shrinking civic and democratic space in...

Against the troubling rights erosion made possible by the NSL and the political abandonment by the Hong Kong SAR government of its people are: the institutional and normative safeguards inherent in Hong Kong’s judicial and legal system, and the safeguards provided by international human rights...

Human Rights in China has learned that poet Wang Zang ( 王藏) and his wife Wang Li ( 王丽), of Chuxiong City, Yunnan Province, have been arrested for "inciting subversion of state power." Police authorities have referred their cases in mid-September to the procuratorate to seek indictments. According...

In a joint communication to the Chinese government, seven United Nations independent human rights experts presented a legal assessment of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL). They also detailed their numerous concerns that the law does not comply with the government’s international legal...

Sharon Hom: “While the use of online platforms enables broader participation, greater transparency, and easier access, we also urge greater attention to potential measures for protecting civil society groups and human rights defenders against retaliation, particularly for those operating in...

On August 20, 2020, Peking University issued a “Notice on Regulating the Declaration and Approval of Participation in Online International Conferences Organized by Foreign Parties.” The Notice requires all teachers and students planning to participate in online conferences (webinars) to declare...

Sharon Hom, HRIC Executive Director: “Hong Kongers continue to exercise their rights in the closing civil society space and express resistance in creative, diverse ways. The international community must stand in solidarity with the people of Hong Kong.”

Many were charged with and convicted of “subversion of state power” and “inciting subversion of state power.” HRIC’s updated 709 case chart highlights the ongoing impunity of the Chinese authorities in violating the rights of rights defense professionals and activists, the right of an individual to...

HRIC has prepared an annotated bilingual chart of the NSL-HK to facilitate reading of the law and highlight the troubling, problematic aspects of the law, including…

Under siege at home and abroad, Xi Jinping, the helmsman of the Communist Party of China, decided he may as well go all out, wage a war against whatever may come while other countries are preoccupied, and settle the Hong Kong question once and for all…

“We urge the NPCSC to abandon plans to introduce national security legislation for Hong Kong, as what is known about the draft law so far and the experiences with respective national security laws in mainland China strongly indicate that neither the law nor its application would conform to...

In his article, lawyer Chen Jiangang discusses what he terms as the “Four Breakthroughs” that President Xi Jinping has “achieved” during his administration: 1. Breaking with the principle of abiding by international treaty obligation, (referring to the the 1984 Joint Declaration that the Chinese...

Xu Zhiyong wrote in his seminal essay in 2012: “China Needs a New Citizens Movement”: “China needs a new citizens movement. This movement is a political movement in which this ancient nation bids utter farewell to authoritarianism and completes the civilized transformation to constitutional...

[English translation by Human Rights in China] “We have to ask the Chinese ruling party and the Chinese government: Which civilized Chinese law expressly confers the government the right to use state military force to kill, at will, students and civilians in peaceful demonstrations?

On Thursday, May 21, authorities in Beijing announced a draft Decision to formulate and enact national security legislation prohibiting four identified security threats in Hong Kong: secession, subversion of state power, terrorism, and foreign interference. The move contravenes requirement in...

Wang Quanzhang ( 王全璋) , a lawyer in custody since the “709” crackdown in 2015, was supposedly released from prison on April 5, 2020. But instead of being allowed to go home to Beijing, Wang was sent to Jinan ostensibly for a 14-day quarantine. But by April 23, he had still not been allowed to...

Pressure has been clearly mounting on the Hong Kong SAR government to once again make an attempt to introduce an Article 23 law. The overwhelming election of Pan-Democratic candidates in the district council elections in November 2019, along with the sustained mobilization of diverse sectors during...

On April 2, 2020, the Zhengzhou Lawyers Association issued a disciplinary “warning” to lawyer Liu Yingying( 刘莹莹 ) for posting on her blog an article titled, “Today, family members lined up in a long queue to pick up their relatives’ ashes at the Hankou Funeral Home.“ The warning states that Liu is...

In her statement, Shi Minglei, the wife of Cheng Yuan, the public interest advocate facing charges of “subversion of state power,” cites serious factual inaccuracies in the article, "The Cheng Yuan I know" (谈谈我认识的程渊). She states that the article maliciously links, without evidence, the arrest of...

Christian Jiang Zhanchun ( 蒋湛春) has been criminally detained in Zhenjiang City Detention Center on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble and disrupting the working order of state organs." Xu Yonghai ( 徐永海) , an elder of the Beijing Christian house church, Divine Love Group, appeals...