Persecuted activists Peng Lifa, human rights lawyer Xie Yang, journalist Zhang Zhan & Tibetan singer Asang
Civic space in China is still rated as ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. China’s authoritarian state, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has systemically repressed fundamental freedoms. Human rights defenders and activists report harassment and intimidation; unfair trials; arbitrary, incommunicado and lengthy detentions; and torture and other ill-treatment for exercising their fundamental rights. Protests do occur but are quickly repressed, and critical civil society groups have been shut down.
In July 2025, human rights groups urged the EU to prioritise human rights in the forthcoming European Union (EU)-China Summit to be held in China from 24th to 25th July 2025. They urged the EU to condemn the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity and called for the immediate and unconditional release of human rights defenders who have been detained for their work.
In August 2025, it was reported that Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders had urged China to uphold the rights of imprisoned human rights defenders, including by ensuring that they are not subjected to torture or ill-treatment. The expert called on the Government of China to ensure these detainees are granted family and counsel visits and adequate medical attention, and are held in officially recognised places of detention, with information on their fate and whereabouts being provided to any person with a legitimate interest.
In September 2025, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said at the 60th session of the Human Rights Council that the progress the UN has sought in China for the protection of the rights of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, as well as Tibetans in their regions, has yet to materialise.
Since June 2025, human rights defenders and activists have been arrested and prosecuted. Reports highlighted forced travel to disappear critics, and the use of spies by China to infiltrate overseas activist groups. Amendments to the cybersecurity law and new internet ID System increase restrictions on freedom of expression and reinforce censorship and surveillance. There has been an increase in transnational repression of protesters worldwide. Bullying triggered a mass protest and crackdown as protests increase across the country.
Association
Peng Lifa sentenced to nine years in prison
#PengLifa was detained for his solo protest against COVID-19 restrictions and #XiJinping’s governance which spurred a series of similar protests globally. The PRC should be pressed to free him and end long-standing and harsh restrictions on free speech in China. #FreeThemAll #UPR pic.twitter.com/cQ6mTEzlNH
— China Commission (@CECCgov) January 14, 2024
In July 2025, Peng Lifa, who has been forcibly disappeared for more than two years, was handed a sentence of nine years on charges including “arson” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Peng was detained in October 2022, after hanging banners on a Beijing bridge criticising Xi Jinping just before the start of the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
Peng Lifa had staged a solo protest from the Sitong Bridge in Beijing, peacefully expressing his dissent about the government’s COVID-19 lockdown and the anti-democratic rule of Xi Jinping, before being dragged away by police. Peng subsequently vanished into police custody with his whereabouts and the nature of his detention unknown.
His bridge protest inspired many people in China and around the world, including the “blank paper” protest.
“Peng’s so-called ‘crime’ was nothing more than expressing views Chinese authorities don’t like, but Chinese and international law guarantee free speech. This sentence is an indictment not of Peng Lifa, but of Xi Jinping’s profoundly politicised legal system”, said Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director of CHRD.
Sham trial of human rights lawyer Xie Yang
After 3.5 years of detention marked by #torture and denied legal rights, lawyer #XieYang was tried behind closed doors on July 30. He was forced to fire his own lawyer in protest. His real “offense”? Telling the truth about repression and injustice.https://t.co/1SZDEjEjw0 pic.twitter.com/ojEbaq9XRW
— CHRD人权捍卫者 (@CHRDnet) July 31, 2025
On 30th July 2025, the Changsha Intermediate Court in Hunan Province tried human rights lawyer Xie Yang behind closed doors on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.”
According to the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), those charges stem from Xie Yang’s remarks online and to foreign journalists about political and legal affairs, and human rights violations, in China. Authorities convened the trial after Xie Yang had been held in pre-trial detention for over three and a half years, during which he alleged he was repeatedly tortured. The hearing was marred by numerous fair trial violations.
Xie Yang is a human rights lawyer who represented many human rights defenders before facing government retaliation for his work. He was detained and tortured during the government’s “709” crackdown on human rights lawyers in 2015, an unprecedented assault on human rights lawyers and rule of law activists, and then stripped of his law licence in 2020.
Ex-lawmaker from Macao held on national security charge
Macau authorities should unconditionally release former lawmaker & pro-democracy activist Au Kam San – arrested on national security charges.@hrw rarely reports on Macao – this is the 1st time the draconian national security law has been invoked there. https://t.co/TXDNwfsco8
— Elaine Pearson (@PearsonElaine) August 7, 2025
Former lawmaker and veteran pro-democracy activist Au Kam San was arrested on national security charges. This is the first time the draconian Law on Safeguarding National Security has been invoked in China’s Macao Special Administrative Region.
According to Human Rights Watch on 30th July 2025, Macao police arrested Au for violating article 13 of the national security law, which carries a maximum 10-year sentence. Au is being held without bail pending investigation.
The Macao Judicial Police accused Au of “having long-term contacts” with “overseas anti-China entities”, providing them with “false and inflammatory information”, “arousing hatred”, “disrupting Macao’s 2024 chief executive election, and causing foreign countries to take hostile actions against Macao.”
Au, a 68-year-old Portuguese citizen and former primary school teacher, became an activist after the Chinese government’s Tiananmen Massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989. Since then, he and others have played a major role in the city’s small civil society. For 30 years, Au’s group, the Macao Union of Democratic Development, organised annual vigils to commemorate the crackdown, even as Au and fellow organisers endured abuse, including physical assaults and loss of jobs.
The group finally disbanded under government pressure in 2023. Between 2001 and 2021, Au was elected to local office five times and became Macao’s longest serving pro-democracy lawmaker. Macao was a Portuguese colony until 1999, when its sovereignty was transferred to the People’s Republic of China.
Tibetan singer and activist detained
🚨➡️ The arrest of Tibetan singer Tzukte in Tibet for singing a song in praise of HH the Dalai Lama is a clear reflection and testimony of Tibetans’ devotion to His Holiness inside Tibet, despite China’s efforts to suppress their spirit. Free Tzukte. Bhod Gyalo! ✊✌️❤️ pic.twitter.com/2oBBjbHPQL
— Tenzing Jigme (@MPTenzingJigme) July 29, 2025
A young Tibetan singer and activist was detained by authorities, the India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) said.
Tzukte, popularly known as Asang, was taken into custody some time in early July 2025, after he sang a song eulogising Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Asang, who is in his twenties, is a student of Gebe, a prominent Tibetan singer supporting the Tibetan cause through his music.
Reports further indicate that Chinese authorities had been closely monitoring Asang for some time, subjecting him to regular surveillance due to his songs promoting Tibetan unity and patriotism, as well as his calls to protect Tibetan culture and religion.
China considers Tibet an inalienable part of its territory and has ruled the region with an iron fist since its troops crushed an uprising for autonomy in 1959. Rights activists have regularly voiced alarm at Beijing’s alleged efforts to erase cultural and religious identity in Tibet.
Report on forced travel to disappear critics
Help us break the echo chamber. Contact us to help spread the magazine. #ChinaTravelMagazine #DissidentEdition #ForcedTravel https://t.co/qcjIdNemEs pic.twitter.com/DhY8wNjopm
— Safeguard Defenders (保护卫士) (@SafeguardDefend) August 15, 2025
In June 2023, Safeguard Defenders marked the 36-year anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square Massacre with a new publication on the illegal practice of forced travel, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disappears its critics on secret trips to keep them silent at sensitive times.
The group used interviews and media reports to show what forced travel looks like, how it changed during COVID and after COVID, and even include a calendar to show the peak periods when activists are forcibly taken on trips.
They have designed the new report to look like a luxury travel magazine to attract more attention on this issue. ‘China Travel Magazine: Dissident Edition’, includes a map of the country showing some of the actual forced trips that activists went on in the past few years and looks at how local cash-strapped governments may now be scaling back forced travel budgets.
Ten years since widespread 709 crackdown on lawyers
✊ Remembering the 709 Crackdown
On 9 July 2015, Chinese authorities launched a nationwide crackdown targeting up to 250 human rights lawyers and activists. They were sentenced up to 7 years – simply for pursuing justice.
A decade later, the crackdown hasn’t ended. Former… pic.twitter.com/Fm5dFN7F4O
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) July 10, 2025
It has been ten years since the government’s widespread crackdown on human rights lawyers. On 9th July 2015, authorities across China launched an unprecedented assault on human rights lawyers and rule of law activists, an incident now known as the “709” crackdown.
According to CHRD, police seized over 300 lawyers and activists – most of the people undertaking such work. In the days and months that followed, many were forcibly disappeared and dozens arbitrarily detained. Authorities imprisoned ten lawyers and activists on baseless charges, sentencing them to between three to eight years in prison. Officials inflicted collective punishment on family members, including children, for their association with and advocacy for their loved ones.
The “709” crackdown marked a significant increase in Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s assault on independent civil society, and particularly towards the fledgling community of lawyers who sought to find redress for legal and social issues through the court system.
China uses dissidents-turned-spies to infiltrate overseas activist groups
Chinese dissidents overseas typically follow unspoken rules: pseudonyms, encrypted communication, and never share private information with strangers. But a member of a pro-democracy group often eschewed such precautions, according his activist peers. https://t.co/wkT5MMYaw4
— ICIJ (@ICIJorg) July 16, 2025
An investigation published in June 2025 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in collaboration with 42 media partners, detailed Chinese authorities’ tactics to monitor, intimidate and threaten political opponents and the failure of inter-governmental institutions in countering state-sponsored repression.
ICIJ and its partners found that Beijing’s strategy to silence regime critics also relies on right-wing social media groups in foreign countries, professional hackers, staff of Chinese nongovernmental organisations with access to UN proceedings, and members of China’s diaspora connected to the CCP-linked United Front Work Department.
Several governments, including the U.S., New Zealand, Sweden, Turkey and Australia, have investigated dozens of suspects allegedly involved in Chinese covert operations targeting dissidents in recent years. In some cases, authorities found that the targets of espionage later ended up in prison or had family members threatened.
Expression
Journalist jailed another four years
Chinese COVID whistleblower Zhang Zhan sentenced to 4 more years in jail, group says https://t.co/VRtBH3woz0 pic.twitter.com/g4K6iZr4Ay
— New York Post (@nypost) September 21, 2025
A journalist jailed for four years after documenting the early phases of the COVID-19 outbreak from the pandemic’s epicenter was sentenced on 19th September 2025 to four more years in prison.
Zhang Zhan, 42, was sentenced on a charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, the same charge that led to her December 2020 imprisonment after she posted first-hand accounts from the central city of Wuhan on the early spread of coronavirus.
RSF Asia-Pacific advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska said: “She should be celebrated globally as an ‘information hero’, not trapped in brutal prison conditions. Her ordeal and persecution must end. It is more urgent than ever for the international diplomatic community to pressure Beijing for her immediate release.”
Zhang was initially arrested after months of posting accounts, including videos, from crowded hospitals and empty streets that painted a more dire early picture of the disease than the official narrative
As previously documented, Zhang Zhan has been vocal against human rights violations and suppression of dissent in China. In February 2020, Zhang Zhan visited Wuhan city in Hubei province of China to report on the COVID-19 outbreak from the ground. She went missing in Wuhan in May 2020. It later emerged that she had been taken by the Chinese authorities and detained in Shanghai. In December 2020, a court convicted her of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after a sham trial and sentenced her to four years in prison.
Zhang was released in May 2024 and detained again three months later, eventually being formally arrested and placed in Shanghai’s Pudong Detention Center
Draft cybersecurity law amendment doubles down on digital repression
In June 2025, ARTICLE 19 said that plans to deliberate draft amendments to the 2017 Cybersecurity Law proposed by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) doubles down on China’s repressive digital norms, further illustrating the human rights concerns inherent in China’s model of cybersecurity governance.
The 2017 Cybersecurity Law has been foundational to much of China’s digital governance model and has influenced similarly repressive laws in other countries. The law establishes provisions on data localisation, real-name identity verification, tight monitoring and censorship, and network shutdowns, while simultaneously weakening cybersecurity.
According to ARTICLE 19, the most concerning changes proposed by the amendment involve significant increases in penalties, including greater liability for management personnel, and the reinforcement of censorship and surveillance as core elements of cybersecurity governance.
New internet ID system a threat to online expression
Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) and ARTICLE 19 said that a new government Internet identification requirement will further constrict online anonymity. The new mechanism, developed by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), went into full effect on 15th July 2025.
This policy requires internet users to register through the National Online Identity Authentication App, developed by the MPS, using their national identification card and facial recognition. Upon registration, users receive a “web number” and “web certificate”, enabling them to access various public services and popular applications without repeatedly entering login credentials.
Real-name identity verification is already required for multiple web-based services — from social media, sim card to domain name registration — under the Cybersecurity Law enacted in 2017 and other regulations.
Shane Yi, researcher at CHRD said: “Internet users across China already endure heavy censorship and control by the government. The new Internet ID regulations escalate Beijing’s attack on free speech, putting human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, and anyone who questions authority at even greater risk.”
In a joint analysis, CHRD and ARTICLE 19 determined that the regulations give the Chinese government even greater opportunities to surveil and control online speech, expand censorship, and threaten reprisals against human rights defenders. It provides no accountability to address numerous privacy concerns, and risks extraterritorial applications.
Peaceful Assembly
Transnational repression of protesters worldwide
📢 It’s here! Our major new report on China’s transnational repression is live.
🌍 This is not just about China. This is about protest everywhere.
✊ Today – on the anniversary of #TiananmenSquare Massacre – we push back.
🔗 Read now: https://t.co/JcXKbyg61H pic.twitter.com/HP03LoHJpO
— ARTICLE 19 (@article19org) June 4, 2025
On 4th June 2025, the 36th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre, ARTICLE 19 launched a new report documenting transnational repression tactics increasingly deployed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to target and silence protesters abroad.
China is now waging a global campaign of transnational repression against protesters critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including overseas Chinese dissidents, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and other diaspora activists and allies.
The report, ‘Going Global: China’s transnational repression of protesters worldwide’ draws on original interviews with 29 representatives of diaspora communities, and offers the most comprehensive narrative yet of the myriad tactics and complex network of coordinated actors involved in China’s transnational repression.
Michael Caster, Head of ARTICLE 19’s Global China Programme, said: “Public acts of physical violence, to online intimidation, the targeting of family members, especially against high-profile protest leaders, have a knock-on effect on human rights movements. The CCP employs its tactics to intimidate people from participating in protest, weakening global support and solidarity for human rights in China and around the world. Transnational repression silences dissent and chills freedom of expression.”
Bullying triggers protest and crackdown
Mass protests erupted in Jiangyou, Sichuan, after a brutal school bullying case that reportedly implicated local police in a cover-up.
On August 3, a video surfaced online showing several young women beating and humiliating another girl inside an abandoned building. In the… https://t.co/6j3JS6KVzk pic.twitter.com/uhKuKWLv8q
— 中国人权-Human Rights in China (@hrichina) August 5, 2025
In August 2025 thousands of residents in a small Chinese city took to the streets to demand accountability in a school bullying case.
On 2nd August 2025, videos from the southwestern city of Jiangyou, in Sichuan Province, started circulating on Chinese social media. The footage showed three teenagers brutally beating another girl in an empty housing block. On 4th August, the Jiangyou police released a statement claiming the 14-year-old victim “had a conflict” with one of the girls beating her in the video, who enlisted two other girls to join the attack that allegedly happened in July 2025. The statement claimed that as a consequence, two of the perpetrators were sent to a correctional school, while the third attacker and the bystanders were admonished.
Feeling the punishment was too light, a large crowd joined the victim’s parents to demand accountability in front of the city hall. Some residents also stormed the building, after which local officials invited the protestors to a conference room and heard their complaints about the government’s handling of the bullying case. Later that day, thousands of residents gathered near the city hall. Several buses of SWAT teams, or Special Police, arrived on the scene shortly afterward, and police set up barricades and roadblocks in front of the city hall. The SWAT unit, dressed in all-black uniforms and armed with batons, is the primary riot control unit for suppressing protests in China. The police arrested several protestors in the afternoon, videos show.
Despite that, even bigger crowds formed in the evening. People started singing the Chinese national anthem and chanting: “No to bullying, give our democracy back!” Around midnight, videos show a SWAT team charging into the crowd and violently beating protesters with batons. They also used pepper spray and arrested more protestors that night. By 3 am, the police had largely cleared the area.
The government also resorted to controlling the narrative. The hashtag for “Jiangyou” briefly topped Weibo’s trending topics chart, according to China Digital Times, a website that tracks the Chinese internet. But comments and videos were soon censored, while posts promoting the official version of events flooded social media searches.
Protests increasing across the country
In August 2025, Freedom House reported that the China Dissent Monitor (CDM) – Freedom House’s initiative to track dissent in the country – has revealed that protests take place regularly in every region of China despite suppression from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Over the last three years, CDM has documented more than 10,000 protest actions, ranging from rural residents protesting land development to nationwide demonstrations against the unprecedented social controls of the government’s zero-COVID-19 policy.
CDM first observed an increase in labor protests – such as strikes over unpaid wages – in early 2023 after the end of pandemic controls. CDM’s latest data indicate that these trends have endured or even accelerated in recent months: there has been a particularly sharp rise in homeowners protesting against the unscrupulous practices of property management companies.
CDM has observed numerous other protest movements that stretch across municipal and provincial boundaries, including those against corruption and malfeasance, stalled housing, and sexual harassment.
