Hubei Human Rights Defender Yin Xu'an Has Been forcibly disappeared for One Year After Traveling to Beijing for Medical Treatment

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On August 12, 2026, this outlet learned that Hubei human rights defender Yin Xu'an has been forcibly disappeared for one year after traveling to Beijing for medical treatment.

Yin Xu'an was intercepted and sent back after traveling to Beijing for medical treatment on August 11, 2025. To date, there has been no news for more than 300 days of Yin Xu'an, a human rights defender from Daye City, Hubei Province, who was forcibly disappeared after traveling to Beijing for medical treatment; his family entrusted lawyers to search locally twice, without result; government departments have passed the buck to one another.

Yin Xu'an began rights defense work in 2007 and participated in protest activities such as watching and supporting others; he was arrested multiple times, subjected to reeducation through labor, and held in black jails; he was imprisoned twice and served eight years. Most recently, he was sentenced to four years and six months in prison. His condition in prison and his physical 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 and returning home. His experience can be described in four words, “life worse than death”; his physical condition is particularly poor. Yin Xu'an is seriously ill and suffers from extremely high-risk hypertension; his blood pressure reached as high as 300/220, he has severe coronary heart disease, and is in urgent need of surgery. In early August, Yin Xu'an traveled to Beijing for medical treatment. Ultimately, on the evening of August 11, 2025, he was abducted by the authorities while boarding a 120 emergency ambulance in Beijing, intercepted and sent back. It has now been exactly one year, and he remains in a state of enforced disappearance, with no news of him. Yin Xu'an went to Beijing solely because of the severity of his illness and to seek medical treatment, yet the Chinese Communist authorities repeatedly intercepted him, forcibly disappeared him, and illegally detained him. This is a serious trampling of his right to life and health.

Profile of Yin Xu'an: Born on August 27, 1974, he is from Daye City, Hubei Province, a former villager of 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 ruling 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 petition in Beijing in 2007.

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

Beginning in 2012, after defending his rights in Beijing, he began paying greater attention to the cause of democratic public-interest rights defense. In 2012, he actively participated in the democratic direct election of academic representatives to the 18th Party Congress, calling for the promotion of political structural reform, the abolition of the reeducation-through-labor system, and a crackdown on black jails. From July to October 2012, he was illegally detained by the authorities for 42 days for reporting and suing the local government of Hubei Province over the illegal expropriation of land, and for suing the Hubei Provincial Reeducation-Through-Labor Committee over issues including illegal extensions and illegal elections.

Beginning in 2013, he actively became involved in actions to watch and support others, including the case of independent candidate Liu Ping in Xinyu, Jiangxi; the Xue Fushun incident in Qufu, Shandong; the “subversion” case of Sun Feng in Zibo, Shandong; the April 29 event commemorating Lin Zhao; the opening of the trial in the “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 in Suzhou, who was subjected to a violent home demolition; and supporting, together with rights defense activists including Wang Fulei, the case of rights defense citizen Wang Jian.

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

On July 25, 2015, because he and rights activists including Wang Fang and Geng Caiwen wore T-shirts supporting the butcher (Wu Gan) in front of the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan and took photographs that they uploaded to online media, he was taken from his home by police on July 28 and detained at the Bao'an Town police station in Daye City. On August 23 of the same year, he was placed under 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 subjected to brutal beatings and torture by prison guards and prison bosses, leaving him physically and psychologically devastated; his repeated requests to meet with a lawyer were denied.

On December 27, 2018, he was released early after a sentence reduction. However, shortly after his release, during the period of the Chinese Communist Party's two sessions, he was again criminally detained by police in Daye City, Hubei Province, on suspicion of “deliberately leaking state secrets,” and was subjected to abuse. He was not released until January 2019.

On May 23, 2019, Yin Xu'an petitioned to defend his rights because Yuan Qifa, secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of Bao'an Town, Daye City, and Yin Qingsong, secretary of the Party branch and village head of Jintang Village, among others, had not only forcibly measured collectively owned land on which the villagers depended for their livelihoods without the consent of any of the villagers of Yisifang Bay in Jintang Village, but had also driven excavators 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, the Daye City Procuratorate indicted his case and brought it before a local court. On January 19, 2020, his case was heard by the Daye City People's Court in Hubei Province, but after being delayed for a long time, he was finally sentenced by the court on July 21, 2021, to four years and six months in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” with his sentence running until November 22, 2023. It was reported that his physical condition in prison was extremely poor and that he had been resuscitated several times. The second-instance verdict in Yin Xu'an's case was issued on January 28, 2022, upholding the original sentence of four and a half years. He had previously been serving his sentence at Huangzhou Prison.

This outlet will continue to monitor Yin Xu'an's situation.