Commentary | Chinese Human Rights Defenders

The real fight for women’s rights in China

October 16, 2025 Comments Off

On Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) addressed the Leaders’ Meeting on Women in Beijing, extolling his government’s support for many aspects of women’s rights. Yet having grown up in China, my vivid memories over the past few decades paint a starkly different picture of how women have fought to (read more…)

In Argentina, a Bold Step for Global Justice: Holding the Chinese Government Accountable for Atrocities Against Uyghurs

July 31, 2025 Comments Off

At a time when authoritarian governments are assaulting international human rights law as never before, Argentina’s highest criminal court has taken an extraordinarily positive step. On June 18, the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation held that a case brought by Uyghurs against Chinese government officials for alleged crimes against humanity and genocide should proceed. (read more…)

“The Status of Democracy and Human Rights in Hong Kong, Five Years After the PRC’s Judicial Takeover”

July 24, 2025 Comments Off

Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) has documented deepening repression under Chinese President Xi Jinping since he assumed power in late 2012, including significantly curtailing the human rights of seven million Hong Kong people. Although Beijing’s tactics there include an attempt to gut Hong Kong’s legal protections for human rights, it (read more…)

China’s System of Mass Arbitrary Detention

March 12, 2025 Comments Off

“Sitting in a prison cell waiting for daybreak”: this is how Chinese legal activist Xu Zhiyong described the prospect of enduring a 14-year prison sentence, handed down by a Shandong court in 2023. Xu’s “crime”? Advocating for civil liberties.

Xi Jinping and Collective Punishment of Human Rights Defenders’ Families

April 15, 2024 Comments Off

For two years Chinese authorities secretly detained the newborn baby, her siblings, and their parents. Their whereabouts and wellbeing remained unknown to family members or lawyers until word began to trickle out in July 2022: the baby and her sister, then 6 years old, had been kept in a psychiatric (read more…)

Censored documentary on migrant workers shows the stakes at the UPR

January 18, 2024 Comments Off

The Chinese government’s willingness to censor a documentary on the plight of migrant workers should cast doubt on how Beijing will portray its development progress at the UPR.

How China Games the Universal Periodic Review System

December 23, 2023 Comments Off

A United Nations review of China’s human rights record set to occur in January should shine a light on Beijing’s atrocity crimes. But there are three ways in which this Universal Periodic Review (UPR) may actually worsen rather than improve the human rights situation inside China.

A UN Body Sheds Light on the Fate of Disappeared Uyghurs

August 30, 2023 Comments Off

A little-known United Nations body, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, is helping to shine a light on the extent of China’s enforced disappearances in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

8 Years After ‘709,’ Persecution of Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Continues

July 9, 2023 Comments Off

Starting on July 9, 2015, the Chinese government launched an unprecedented nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers. In the following few months, police interrogated and detained over 300 lawyers and paralegal assistants and raided three law firms. Dozens of lawyers and legal assistants and activists were detained, and 15 were eventually (read more…)