Hubei human rights defender Yin Xu'an spends his 52nd birthday in enforced disappearance today

On August 27, 2026, this outlet learned that Hubei human rights defender Yin Xu'an is spending his 52nd birthday in enforced disappearance today; he has been forcibly disappeared for 382 days.

Yin Xu'an has participated in rights defense since 2007, and for many years took part in protest actions such as attending and showing solidarity; he has been detained, subjected to reeducation through labor, and held in black jails many times. He has been imprisoned twice, serving a total of eight years. On August 11, 2025, he went to Beijing to seek medical treatment but was intercepted and sent back, after which he lost contact.

Yin Xu'an was previously sentenced to four years and six months in prison; conditions in prison and his health were already very poor. After completing his sentence, he was illegally detained for another year and more than four months before finally being released home. His experience can be described in four words, “life worse than death,” and his physical condition is extremely poor. Yin Xu'an is seriously ill and suffers from extremely high-risk hypertension; his blood pressure reached as high as 300 systolic/220 diastolic, and he has severe coronary heart disease and urgently needs surgery. Yin Xu'an went to Beijing solely because his condition was serious and he needed medical treatment, yet the Chinese Communist authorities repeatedly intercepted him and have illegally held him in enforced disappearance to this day. This is a serious trampling of his rights to life and health.

Introduction to Yin Xu'an: Born on August 27, 1974, he is from Daye City, Hubei Province. He was formerly a villager in Bao'an Town, Daye City, Hubei Province; a public-interest rights defense citizen, a democrat, and a political prisoner.

In 2003, he was subjected to a wrongful judgment by a local court after filing a complaint against the Civil Affairs Bureau of Liangzihu District, Ezhou City, Hubei Province, over its illegal registration in a dispute concerning his and his wife's divorce. The local higher court then failed to act, forcing him to go to Beijing to petition in 2007;

Since November 2007, he has suffered illegal punishment and harm at the hands of the authorities because of his repeated petitioning. He was illegally detained six times and held in black jails eight times for petitioning to defend his rights and participating in attending, showing solidarity, and protest actions. In 2009, during then-U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to China, he applied to the Public Security Bureau's Public Order Corps in Beijing to hold a march and demonstration, and was consequently sentenced by the Hubei authorities to two years of reeducation through labor, with his release extended by three months. During his reeducation-through-labor sentence, he repeatedly fainted and required emergency treatment because he suffered from stage-three hypertension (extremely high risk) and various other illnesses, including hepatitis B, cholecystitis, and gallstones;

Beginning in 2012, because of his rights defense activities in Beijing, he began to pay greater attention to democratic and public-interest rights defense work. In 2012, he actively participated in the democratic direct election of academic representatives to the 18th Party Congress, calling for the advancement of political system reform, the abolition of the reeducation-through-labor system, and the suppression of black jails. From July to October 2012, he was illegally detained by the authorities for 42 days because he reported and sued the local government of Hubei Province over the illegal appropriation of land, and sued the Hubei Provincial Reeducation-Through-Labor Committee over illegal extensions and illegal elections, among other issues;

Beginning in 2013, he actively became involved in attending and showing solidarity with protest actions, including the case of independent candidate Liu Ping in Xinyu, Jiangxi; the Xue Fushun incident in Qufu, Shandong; the “inciting subversion” case of Sun Feng in Zibo, Shandong; the April 29 memorial event for Lin Zhao; the opening of the trial in the “inciting subversion” case of Zhao Fengsheng in Hengyang, Hunan; the Zhengzhou Ten Gentlemen incident; the Zhang Xiaoyu case in Jiaozuo; the opening of the trial in the case of veteran Fan Mugen's violent forced demolition in Suzhou; and the case of rights defender Wang Jian, in which he and rights-defense netizens including Wang Fulei showed solidarity with the rights defender.

On March 8, 2015, he was arrested by the authorities for forwarding via WeChat a “list of personnel stationed in Beijing by Daye City, Hubei,” and was administratively detained for 15 days. On March 24, he was criminally detained on suspicion of “leaking state secrets,” and was later released;

On July 25, 2015, he was again detained after wearing a T-shirt supporting the butcher (Wu Gan) with rights activists Wang Fang and Geng Caiwen in front of the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan and uploading photographs to online media. On July 28, police took him from his home and detained him at the Bao'an Town Police Station in Daye City; on August 23 of the same year, he was transferred to criminal detention. On September 26, he was formally arrested on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” On September 13, 2016, his case was tried at the Daye City People's Court in Hubei Province. On May 27, 2017, the court sentenced him to three years and six months in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” During his detention, he was beaten and tortured by prison guards and inmate bullies, suffering complete physical and psychological devastation, and was repeatedly denied requests to meet with a lawyer;

On December 27, 2018, he was released early after a sentence reduction, but shortly after leaving prison, during the period of the Chinese Communist Party's Two Sessions, he was again criminally detained by the Daye City police in Hubei Province on suspicion of “deliberately leaking state secrets,” and was abused. He was not released until January 2019;

On May 23, 2019, Yin Xu'an petitioned and defended his rights because Yuan Qifa, secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of Bao'an Town, Daye City, and Yin Qingsong, Party secretary and village chief of Jintang Village, among others, had not only forcibly surveyed the collectively owned land on which the villagers of Yinsifangwan, Jintang Village, depended for their livelihood without their consent, but had also brought an excavator to the site to carry out the illegal forced expropriation. He was then subjected to repeated retaliation and again criminally detained on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”;

In October 2019, his case was prosecuted by the Daye City Procuratorate in the local court. Although his case was tried by the Daye City People's Court in Hubei Province on January 19, 2020, it was delayed for a long time, and on July 21, 2021, the court finally sentenced him to four years and six months in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” with his sentence running until November 22, 2023. According to reports, his health was extremely poor in prison and he had been resuscitated several times. The second-instance ruling in Yin Xu'an's case was delivered on January 28, 2022, upholding the original four-and-a-half-year sentence. He had previously served his sentence at Huangzhou Prison.

This outlet will continue to follow Yin Xu'an's circumstances.