Hubei human rights defender Yin Xu’an, forcibly disappeared for 1 year and 3 months, is being held at Huangshi Yuxiang Psychiatric Hospital in the Huangjinshan Development Zone of Huangshi City

On November 9, 2026, this outlet learned that Hubei human rights defender Yin Xu’an has been forcibly disappeared for nearly 1 year and 3 months. A friend of Yin Xu’an recently received a plea for help signed by Yin Xu’an. The letter said that he was “being held at Huangshi Yuxiang Psychiatric Hospital in the Huangjinshan Development Zone of Huangshi City.” After making inquiries, his friends confirmed that it is likely Huangshi Psychiatric Hospital (also called Huangshi Mental Health Center and Veterans Hospital). Address listed online: No. 698 East Jinshan Avenue, Wangren Town, Huangjinshan Industrial New District, Huangshi City, Hubei Province. Hospital switchboard: 0714-6357337.     Medical office: 0714-6366300 

Yin Xu’an has been involved in rights defense since 2007 and has long taken part in protest actions such as observing and showing support. He has repeatedly been detained, sent to reeducation through labor, and held in secret prisons; he has been imprisoned twice, serving a total of eight years, and then lost contact. Yin Xu’an suffers from extremely high-risk hypertension that could become life-threatening at any moment, renal artery aneurysm, multiple cerebral infarctions, hydrocephalus, hypertensive heart disease with heart failure, and other serious illnesses. On August 11, 2025, he went to Beijing with a hospital transfer form in an attempt to receive treatment at a specialist hospital, but while on a stretcher in a Beijing 120 ambulance, he was abducted by a team led by Xu Yuefei, an official from the Baoshan Town government in Huangshi City (the Daya government’s online public information board currently lists him as a people’s representative; telephone: 13092759825). He has been forcibly disappeared ever since, and repeated efforts by his family and lawyers to find him have been unsuccessful.

Yin Xu’an was sentenced to four years and six months in prison. His condition in prison and his health were already poor. After completing his sentence, he was illegally detained for another year and more than four months before finally being released and sent home. His experience can be summed up in four words: “worse than death”; his physical condition is especially poor. Yin Xu’an is seriously ill, with extremely high-risk hypertension; at its worst, his blood pressure reached 300 systolic/220 diastolic. His coronary heart disease is severe, and he urgently needs surgery. Yin Xu’an went to Beijing solely to seek medical care because of the severity of his condition, yet the Chinese Communist authorities repeatedly intercepted him and have forcibly disappeared and illegally detained him to this day. This is a serious violation of his right to life and health.

Profile of Yin Xu’an: Born on August 27, 1974, he is from Daye City, Hubei Province, and was formerly a villager in Baoshan Town, Daye City, Hubei Province. He is a public-interest rights defender, a pro-democracy activist, and a political prisoner.

In 2003, after a local court issued an unjust ruling in a case in which he challenged the Liangzihu District Civil Affairs Bureau in Ezhou City, Hubei Province, for illegally registering his and his wife’s divorce dispute, and the provincial high court did nothing about it, he was forced to petition in Beijing in 2007;

Since November 2007, he has suffered repeated illegal punishment and abuse by the authorities because of his multiple petitions. He has been illegally detained six times and held in secret prisons eight times for petitioning to defend his rights and for taking part in observing, supporting, and protest actions. In 2009, during then U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to China, he applied to the Public Order Corps of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau for permission to hold a march and demonstration. The Hubei authorities sentenced him to two years of reeducation through labor and extended his release by three months. During his time in reeducation through labor, he fainted and required emergency treatment several times because he had stage-three hypertension (extremely high risk) and various other illnesses, including hepatitis B, cholecystitis, and gallstones;

Starting in 2012, after defending rights in Beijing, he began paying greater attention to pro-democracy and public-interest rights defense work. In 2012, he actively took part in the academic representatives’ direct election campaign for the 18th Party Congress, calling for political reform, the abolition of the reeducation-through-labor system, and a crackdown on secret prisons. From July to October 2012, he was illegally detained by the authorities for 42 days after reporting and suing the local Hubei government over the illegal expropriation of land, and challenging the Hubei Reeducation Through Labor Committee over an illegal extension of his term and illegal elections;

Beginning in 2013, he actively began taking part in support and observation actions, including the case of Liu Ping, an independent candidate in Xinyu, Jiangxi; the Xue Fushun incident in Qufu, Shandong; Sun Feng’s “inciting subversion” case in Zibo, Shandong; the April 29 memorial event for Lin Zhao; the opening of Zhao Fengsheng’s “inciting subversion” trial 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, whose home was forcibly demolished in Suzhou; and the case of rights defender Wang Jian, in support of whom he joined rights-defense activists including Wang Fulei.

On March 8, 2015, he was arrested by the authorities for forwarding on WeChat a “list of Beijing-based stability-maintenance personnel from 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 and rights activists Wang Fang, Geng Caiwen, and others wore T-shirts supporting Butcher (Wu Gan) in front of the Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan and uploaded photos to online media. On July 28, police took him from his home and detained him at the Baoshan Town police station in Daye City. On August 23 of that year, his detention was converted to criminal detention. On September 26, he was formally arrested on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” His case went to trial at the Daye City Court in Hubei Province on September 13, 2016. On May 27, 2017, the court sentenced him to three years and six months in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” While detained, he was beaten and tortured by prison guards and inmate 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. But shortly after his release, during the Chinese Communist Party’s Two Sessions, police in Daye City, Hubei Province, criminally detained him on suspicion of “illegally and deliberately disclosing state secrets.” He was also abused and 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 Baoshan Town, Daye City, and Yin Qingsong, Party branch secretary and village head of Jintang Village, had forcibly measured the collectively owned land on which the villagers of Yinsifangwan in Jintang Village depended for their livelihood, without their consent, and brought an excavator to the site to carry out an unlawful 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 him in the local court. His case was heard by the Daye City Court in Hubei Province on January 19, 2020, but was delayed for a long time. 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 ending on November 22, 2023. It is reported that his health in prison was extremely poor and that he had been resuscitated several times. The second-instance judgment in Yin Xu’an’s case was issued 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 situation.