Mother of detained Beijing media worker, freelance writer and independent documentary filmmaker Du Bin critically ill in recent days; family’s request for him to return home for a visit denied

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On August 23, 2026, this outlet learned that the mother of detained Beijing media worker, freelance writer and independent documentary filmmaker Du Bin is critically ill. His family asked prosecutors to allow Du Bin to return home for a visit, but their request was denied. Prosecutors said there would be news of a verdict by the end of August, but that even if he appeals, family visits will still not be permitted. The family believes the prosecution is using this as a means to pressure Du Bin not to appeal.

Du Bin was scheduled to travel to Japan on October 16, 2025, but was taken away by Beijing police the day before his departure (October 15) and detained at the Shunyi Detention Center in Beijing. When he was arrested, he was suspected of the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble; the charges in the indictment are not yet known. Du Bin’s case was heard at the Shunyi District Court in Beijing on June 24, 2026, but no verdict was issued in court.

Biography of Du Bin: Born in 1972, a native of Tancheng County, Linyi City, Shandong Province, Du Bin is a Beijing media worker, freelance writer, independent documentary filmmaker, “war correspondent” in the field of human rights, person prosecuted for his speech, and political prisoner detained in China.

In his early years, he worked successively as a journalist for the Beijing Youth Daily, the Workers’ Daily and the Social and Legal Weekly; beginning in 2004, he started taking news photographs for the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, and his work was published by a number of international media outlets, including the U.S. New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and Time, as well as the U.K.’s Guardian and Germany’s Stern; however, beginning in 2011, after China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to grant him a work permit, he began working as a freelance writer and independent documentary filmmaker; because he published and independently produced numerous books and documentaries documenting the lives and resistance of disadvantaged groups in China, he was hailed as a “war correspondent” in the field of human rights; however, precisely because of this, his writing, documentary style and whereabouts became targets of surveillance and suppression by the Chinese Communist Party government; in 2013, because he filmed and published in Hong Kong the documentaries Women on the Heads of Little Devils and the book Vaginal Coma: Testimony from Survivors of Torture at the Masanjia Women’s Re-education-through-Labor Camp, which reflected and exposed the torture and persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and petitioners at the Masanjia Re-education-through-Labor Camp in Liaoning Province, he was criminally detained by Beijing police in June 2013 on suspicion of “disclosing state secrets” and held at the Fengtai District Detention Center; he was not released until more than a month later; in 2014, because he published his edited book The Tiananmen Massacre in Hong Kong, his situation in mainland China became increasingly sensitive, and in December 2020 he was again criminally detained by Beijing police on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” held at the Daxing District Detention Center, and released on bail pending trial 37 days later;

After his release, he said in an interview with foreign media that his arrest was likely related to the authorities’ desire to investigate as a priority whether he had received funds from overseas; at the detention center, he was interrogated five times in succession, for more than three hours each time. The interrogations mainly concerned how all of his manuscripts had been published since he wrote his first book in 2007, how he had sent the manuscripts to publishers for distribution, the number of copies printed, the actual amount he had earned, and so on; after repeated questioning, prosecutors concluded that they could not find evidence, and that his financial situation and royalty income were normal, and ultimately had no choice but to release him on bail pending trial; however, he stressed that he had committed no crime and would still publish, as originally planned, his new book Red Terror: Lenin’s Communist Experiment in January 2021;

On October 15, 2025, as he was preparing to travel abroad and fly to Japan the following day, he was suddenly taken away from his rented residence by police from the Gaoliying police station in Shunyi, Beijing, and was unreachable from that point onward; later, after his younger sister Du Jirong made inquiries through various channels, she learned that he had been criminally detained by Shunyi District police in Beijing on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”; on December 3, she learned that his defense lawyer had successfully met with him and that he had been formally arrested by the Shunyi District Procuratorate, but when asked why he had been arrested and detained, police refused to disclose details of the case, citing “state secrets involved in the case.” He is currently detained at the Shunyi Detention Center in Beijing (Nan’an, Nihe Village, Mapo Town, Shunyi District, Beijing, postal code: 101300).

This outlet will continue to follow developments in Du Bin’s case.