HRF signs a joint letter to call on Chinese President Xi Jinping to pardon journalist at risk of dying in prison

The Human Rights Foundation along with the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and a coalition of nine human rights NGOs call on Chinese President Xi Jinping to pardon journalist and two-time RSF Press Freedom Prize laureate, Huang Qi, who may die in prison if not freed immediately.

The Human Rights Foundation signed a a joint letter published on July 22nd, urging Chinese President Xi Jinping to pardon investigative journalist and 2004 RSF Press Freedom Prize laureate Huang Qi from prison, aged 57, who has been detained since November 2016 and was sentenced last year by the Mianyang Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan Province to 12 years in prison despite critical health conditions that put him at risk of dying if not freed immediately.

He is being accused of leaking state secrets and providing state secrets abroad, after a 2-year detention and a closed trial. The journalist and founder of civil-rights information website 64 Tianwang, winner of the same prize in 2016, is in reality being punished for his commitment to reporting human rights violations by certain Chinese officials.

In a statement published on December 20th, 2018 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), following a petition by RSF, four UN human rights experts called for his release. The document noted that the jailed Chinese journalist was in a dire health condition that would “continue to deteriorate to a fatal point” if he stayed in detention, where he suffered from ill treatment and lack of appropriate medical care.

In 2017, Nobel Peace Prize and RSF Press Freedom Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and the dissident blogger Yang Tongyan both died from cancer that was left untreated in detention, and several other journalists and press freedom defenders are at risk to suffer a similar fate.

China is currently holding more than 114 journalists behind bars and is ranked 177th out of 180 in the RSF 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

Signatories:

Article 19

Association of Taiwan Journalists

Chinese Human Rights Defenders

Committee To Protect Journalists

Freedom House

Index On Censorship

Human Rights Foundation

Human Right In China

Media Watch

Reporters Without Borders

Safeguard Defenders

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.