Huang Xueqin
Formerly a journalist at several domestic Chinese media outlets, Huang Xueqin has worked in recent years to promote women’s rights, and to document and expose sexual harassment against women and girls. In October 2017, she surveyed hundreds of female journalists from 15 provinces in China on their experience of workplace sexual harassment, and published a report of the findings in March 2018. Around the same time, several female university students from the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics approached Huang Xueqin with details of their sexual harassment at the hands of a prominent male professor. Huang Xueqin assisted Luo Xixi, one of the victims, to publicly lodge a complaint against the professor, igniting a national debate on the lack of effective mechanisms to address sexual harassment on campuses.
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.
