Huang Qi

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Huang Qi (Chinese: 黃琦; Pinyin: Huáng Qí, born April 7, 1963 ) is a Chinese webmaster and human rights activist . He is the co-founder of the Tianwang Center for Missing Persons (later renamed the Tianwang Human Rights Center) with his wife, Zeng Li . Initially, the organization's mission was to combat human trafficking , which had become a growing problem in the late 1990s, but later it became a campaign against human rights violationsexpanded. Huang is the owner and webmaster of 64Tianwang website, which was originally designed to post news about people who went missing in the People's Republic of China .

Huang was detained by the government from June 2000 to June 2005 and arrested again in July 2008 for "illegally holding state secrets" after helping victims of the Sichuan earthquake . In November 2009, he was sentenced to three years in prison. Huang was later described in the media as a political prisoner and Amnesty International described him as a victim of inaccurate state secrecy laws. In 2019 he was sentenced to twelve years in prison.

64Tianwang website

Huang and his wife Zeng Li from Chengdu in the province of Sichuan had set up the site 64Tianwang in June 1998 to cases of human trafficking and information of missing persons to published. Huang managed the website; helped decide on its content and actively investigated cases which could help free several girls from trafficking. He went on to publish additional articles through the end of 2000 exposing how government officials exploited people. These included the death of a 15-year-old boy and the case of a Falun Gong practitioner. The police tried to take Huang's website offline, but they moved it to a server in the United States in good time.

Huang was arrested in late 2000 on charges of "inciting subversion" and was sentenced to five years in prison. Soon after his release in 2005, he continued posting similar content on his website, just as he had done before his arrest. He managed to do this until June 2008, when he was arrested on charges of "illegal possession of state secrets". The arrest came shortly after he published an article on behalf of parents of schoolchildren who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake calling for an investigation into the construction of schools.

Imprisonment

Early 2000s

Huang was arrested on June 3, 2000, the day before the 11th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and charged with posting articles on his website about protests by dissidents living abroad . The website was used by the Uyghur independence movement in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and by Falun Gong .

Huang was detained in the Chengdu No. 1 Detention Center in July 2000 . Former cellmates said that Huang had been beaten regularly and withheld from him any medicines he needed. Huang was eventually charged with "subversion" and Articles 55, 56, 103 and 105 in August 2001 and tried in secret by the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court in August 2001 . Huang was detained without sentencing until May 9, 2003, after which he was sentenced to five years in prison. Amnesty International described him as a political prisoner who was " imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression and association" and requested his immediate release.

2005

On June 4, 2005, Huang Qi was released from prison after completing his term. He told Radio Free Asia that he would like to reopen its website, dedicated to the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre . “I will do my best,” Huang said, “to get the Tianwang website back online. When it was first established it was only for very few people, but I now know that there are many like-minded people. "

Sichuan earthquake

After the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, he supported relief efforts and also responded to requests from parents who needed help with questions and complaints about the collapse of the school buildings. Huang published their demands as an article on his website. A week later, on June 10th, he was arrested by plainclothes police in Chengdu on charges of "illegal possession of state secrets". This is an imprecise charge that is often used by the Chinese government to take tough action against dissidents. His arrest was not officially announced until July 18, 2008. In November 2009, Huang was sentenced to three years in prison because documents from two cities were found in his home. The court was heavily guarded by the police, and only Huang's wife and mother were allowed to attend the trial. Huang's lawyers were unable to attend because of the short notice. Huang is expected to appeal the verdict, but bail was denied.

Human rights organizations condemned the court ruling and the "inhuman treatment" of Huang in prison. Amnesty International reported that Huang was interrogated and deprived of sleep for a long time while in detention. Huang's family said that his health deteriorated rapidly while he was in detention and that he was not receiving adequate medical care. One of his lawyers mentioned that he was diagnosed with two tumors during his detention, one in his stomach and one in his chest. On November 7th, the United States House of Representatives passed a near-unanimous resolution calling for the release of activists Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren .

Following Huang's arrest, human rights activist and scholar Liu Dan published an article on Huang's 64Tianwang website condemning the "Harmonious Society" ideology of Chinese President Hu Jintao , saying that it was a "deception" given Huang Qi's conviction. Liu wrote that Hu's government silenced anyone whose views differed from those of the party line, whether that opinion was from external elements (censorship of dissidents), foreign elements (erasing the news about the US President Barack Obama's citizens' meeting ) or within the Chinese political system itself (removal of Premier Wen Jiabao's calls for greater freedom in the Xinhua scriptures). Huang was released in 2011 after completing his term.

present

Reporters Without Borders (ROG) reported that Huang Qi was temporarily arrested on October 24, 2016 by police in southwest China's Sichuan Province, who questioned him about articles on his 64Tianwang website, including articles about Xi Jinping . Attempts were made to force Huang to issue a statement saying that some of his articles were false. According to the ROG, Chinese authorities often arrest bloggers and human rights activists before major political events to prevent coverage of unexpected protests. On the day of Huang's arrest, the four-day plenary session of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, which meets once a year, began.

In the summer of 2019, Huang Qi was sentenced to twelve years in prison for "disseminating state secrets" and deprived of his political rights for four years.

Awards

  • In 2004, Reporters Without Borders awarded Huang Qi the Cyber ​​Freedom Prize.
  • On May 3, 2014, International Press Freedom Day, he was honored by Reporters Without Borders with the “Freedom of Information Heroes” award.
  • His website 64Tianwang was nominated for the 2016 Press Freedom Prize, which Reporters Without Borders awards annually.

See also

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Jake Hooker, Voice Seeking Answers for Parents About a School Collapse Is Silenced , The New York Times, July 11, 2008, accessed November 18, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c Cyber-dissident accused of illegal possession of state secrets is denied right to see lawyer, Reporters Without Borders , July 21, 2008, accessed November 18, 2016
  3. ↑ a b Michael Bristow, China activist Huang Qi sentenced to three years , BBC News, November 23, 2009, accessed November 18, 2016
  4. ↑ Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Political Prisoner Database, Chengdu Court Postpones Trial of Activist Huang Qi , March 12, 2009, accessed November 18, 2016
  5. ↑ China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau) , US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2004, February 28, 2005, accessed November 18, 2016
  6. ↑ China must free activist who defended earthquake victims ( memento September 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Amnesty International, November 23, 2009, web.archive.org, accessed November 18, 2016
  7. ↑ Appeals: Huang Qi, Prisoner of Conscience, Sichuan Province ( Memento November 17, 2004, Internet Archive ), Amnesty International, February 16, 2003, accessed November 18, 2016
  8. ↑ Huang Qi, Prisoner of Conscience, Sichuan Province ( January 31, 2004 memento on Internet Archive ), Amnesty International, February 18, 2013, web.archive.org, accessed November 18, 2016
  9. ↑ Freed Chinese Dissident Vows To Resume Tiananmen Web Site , Radio Free Asia, June 6, 2005, accessed November 18, 2016
  10. ↑ a b Chinese critic on quake response gets 3 years , Associated Press, November 23, 2009, accessed November 18, 2016
  11. ↑ Human Rights in China Condemns the Detention of Huang Qi by Police in Chengdu ( Memento of April 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Human Rights In China, June 14, 2008, web.archive.org, accessed on November 18, 2016
  12. ↑ a b c d e f China: Activist who defended earthquake victims jailed for three years - Amnesty demands immediate release ( Memento June 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Amnesty International UK, November 23, 2009, accessed on November 18, 2016
  13. ^ US House backs China quake activists , AFP, Nov. 8, 2009, The Indian Express, accessed Nov. 18, 2016
  14. ↑ Dan Liu, 刘丹 ： 从 黄琦 的 被 判刑 说 胡锦涛 "和谐 社会" 的 骗局 (From The sentencing of Huang Qi to Illustrating the Sham that is Hu Jintao's "Harmonious Society") ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2010 in Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , (Chinese) 64Tianwang.com, November 23, 2009, accessed November 18, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.64tianwang.com
  15. ↑ a b Gabriel Must Demand the Release of Journalists , Reporters Without Borders, November 1, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016
  16. ↑ China: Twelve years imprisonment for online activist Huang Qi. In: orf.at . July 29, 2019, accessed August 7, 2019.
  17. ^ Reporters Without Borders eV: Heroes of Freedom of the Press. Retrieved February 2, 2018 .
Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Huang is the family name here, Qi is the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Huang, Qi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese webmaster and human rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1963