Yin Xu'an (尹旭安)
Yin Xu'an (尹旭安) is a petitioner and a human rights defender from Daye city in Hubei province. He has campaigned on human rights issues, including wrongful convictions, the “re-education through labour” system, extralegal detention, unlawful State exappropriation of land, and judicial harassment against human rights defenders and political activists. He has also advocated for the Chinese government to ratify international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Due to his human rights advocacy, Yin Xu'an had been repeatedly detained or imprisoned since 2007. Yin Xu'an was arrested in July 2015 shortly after participating in an offline and online campaign for the release of a human rights defender, and was later sentenced in May 2017 to three-and-a-half years.
Chinese human rights defenders work across a wide spectrum of issues, engaging with rights violators on numerous levels. Many of China’s most prominent and most stringently prosecuted defenders have worked to protect the health and well-being of victims of physically harmful government and corporate practice, including forced abortion, food health scandals, environmental pollution, and corrupt or negligent government action leading to preventable loss of life. Other Chinese HRDs work to protect the economic rights of Chinese citizens, advocating for victims of property appropriation, forced demolition, and violation of labour contracts. Still others take on cases of freedom of expression for China’s ethnic and religious minorities.
