Famous human rights defender Ding Jiaxi, sentenced to 12 years, has been kept indoors at Jiangbei Prison, barred from outdoor time; book purchases restricted and mailed books returned

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On June 12, 2026, this outlet learned: According to the latest notice from Ms. Luo Shengchun, the wife of lawyer Ding Jiaxi: “Lawyer Ding Jiaxi has been kept indoors at Jiangbei Prison the entire time and is not allowed outdoor time. His book purchases have been restricted, books mailed to him have been returned, and the letters I sent him were opened, withheld, and had pages removed. He is not allowed to call me or his family members in China. I called to question the officer surnamed Xin, head of the prison administration section specifically responsible for controlling him: You know that Ding Jiaxi has committed no crime whatsoever, so why are you bullying him like this? You harm others without benefiting yourself—aren’t you afraid of retribution? He said he was fulfilling his duty and accused me of threatening him…”

Profile of Ding Jiaxi: Born on August 17, 1967, he is from Yichang, Hubei Province. He was formerly an engineer at the Shenyang General Aviation Industry Corporation and the Beijing General Aviation Industry Corporation. He previously served as a member of the Enterprise Restructuring Professional Committee of the Beijing Lawyers Association, a member of the Central Legal Affairs Committee of the China Association for Promoting Democracy, secretary-general of the Beihang Entrepreneurs Association, and director of the Legal Committee of the Zhongguancun International Software Incubation Association, among other positions. He was formerly director of Dehong Law Firm, a well-known human rights lawyer, one of the organizers and coordinators of Beijing’s New Citizens Movement, and a political prisoner in China.

Since 2010, he had actively participated in promoting educational equality activities advocating that children accompanying migrant workers be allowed to take the national college entrance examination where they live. On December 9, 2012, he and Xu Zhiyong, Sun Hanhui, Wang Yonghong, and others issued an open letter to Xi Jinping, the newly appointed general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, and other senior CCP leaders, demanding that 205 Chinese officials at or above the ministerial level, including Xi Jinping, be the first to publicly disclose their assets. They also broadly solicited citizen signatures, receiving more than 8,000. These activities touched the Chinese Communist Party’s fragile and sensitive nerves, and on April 17, 2013, Beijing police criminally detained him on the charge of “illegal assembly” and held him at Beijing No. 3 Detention Center. On May 21 and November 4, 2013, Beijing police successively changed the charges against him to “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order.” On January 27, 2014, Beijing authorities put him on trial on the charge of “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order.” However, given the serious violations of law that occurred during the trial and the clear disadvantage to the outcome of the case, he had no choice but to announce in court that he was terminating the engagement of his defense lawyers, forcing the court to adjourn and announce that judgment would be delivered at a later date. On April 18, 2014, after a retrial by Beijing’s Haidian District Court, he was ultimately sentenced to three years and six months in prison for “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place,” and was later sent to Chadian Zhanqian Prison in Tianjin to serve his sentence. He was released after completing his sentence on October 16, 2016.

In December 2019, because he had attended a private gathering held in Xiamen, Fujian Province, by dissidents from various regions—a gathering later referred to by the authorities as the “Xiamen Gathering Case”—he was taken from a friend’s home by Shandong police on December 26 of that year. He was subsequently placed under residential surveillance at a designated location by Yantai police as the principal defendant in the “Xiamen Gathering Case.” On June 19, 2020, police in Linshu County, Linyi City, formally arrested him on suspicion of “subversion of state power.” On August 5, 2021, the Linyi Municipal Procuratorate indicted him on the charge of subversion of state power and transferred the case to the Linyi Intermediate People’s Court for trial. It is reported that during his secret detention, he suffered brutal torture, including being deprived of sleep for 73 consecutive days, being forced to sit on the “tiger bench” for eight consecutive days (an extreme form of torture), being subjected for six months to noise and 24-hour fluorescent-light exposure, being barred from bathing and brushing his teeth for extended periods, and even being deprived of the right to eat. On April 10, 2023, the CCP authorities sentenced him to 12 years in prison and deprived him of political rights for three years, with his sentence running until March 21, 2032. He had previously been detained at the Linshu County Detention Center in Shandong Province. He appealed, but his appeal was rejected on second instance and the original judgment was upheld. He has now been transferred to Hubei Jiangbei Prison. Jiangbei Prison is located at No. 228 Jiangbei Avenue, Jiangling County, Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, postal code 434110; telephone: 0716-4781198. His rights in prison continue to be violated and deprived.

This outlet will continue to monitor Ding Jiaxi’s situation in prison.