Nanjing Rights Activist Su Li, Who Was Arrested, Sentenced to Probation and Released

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On October 1, 2026, this website learned that Ms. Su Li, a rights activist from Nanjing who was arrested in September 2025, had been sentenced to probation and released several months earlier, with a probation term of three years.

Su Li’s profile: Female, born on July 9, 1974, from Jiangsu Province, residing at Building 10, No. 36 Huxi Village, Jianye District, Nanjing; former department supervisor at Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Five Star Appliance”); rights activist.

In her early years, she attended Nanjing Normal University; after graduating in 1997, she soon began working at Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Co., Ltd., and was later promoted to department supervisor; in 2013, avian flu broke out in Shanghai, Anhui and other places, and her local administrative authorities also directed local urban management officers to conduct inspections and enforce the law promptly in April 2013; because she raised chickens at home, urban management officers came to enforce the law, but a conflict broke out because she was dissatisfied with their brutal law-enforcement conduct, and she was consequently given a criminal punishment; afterward, she felt deeply wronged and petitioned to defend her rights, but this had no effect and she was subjected to retaliation; subsequently, because for many years she had not only petitioned to defend her own rights but also actively participated in speaking out for the truth about social public-interest matters (such as speaking out for the “Chained Woman”), the local authorities became even more dissatisfied with her and increasingly treated her as a target for suppression in the name of maintaining stability, and she was also forced to resign from her job; on October 3, 2022, on the eve of the opening of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress, she was suddenly beaten for no apparent reason by a man outside her home, struck with a hard object on her head, chest and other parts of her body, and pinned to the ground and kicked and stomped hard on her lower body until she lost consciousness and convulsed all over; after she cried out for help desperately for more than 10 minutes, 110 police finally arrived at the scene and pulled the assailant away, and only then was she sent to the hospital for treatment, where it was found that she had multiple fractures; two days later, she felt that her left maxillary bone was fractured and that eating was difficult, but because no police had intervened while she was in the hospital, the hospital said it would no longer treat her, refused to provide the examination report, and urged her to leave as soon as possible; afterward, she repeatedly complained to the police at the Jianye District police station in Nanjing about the assault and injuries, demanding that an investigation be opened, but the police continually delayed and failed to act; on February 28, 2023, when she returned to the hospital for a follow-up examination, she discovered that the local police had forcibly taken her examination report and said they would give it directly to the forensic examiner, and that she did not need to know the results of the hospital examination; that same month, she also submitted a request to Section Chief Jin of the Muchaohe Subdistrict Office in Jianye District, hoping for a resolution to the assault; when there was still no result several days later, she decided to go to Beijing for treatment, but was lured into a trap and blocked; on March 4 of the same year, with the Chinese Communist Party’s “Two Sessions” imminent, the authorities, in the name of maintaining stability, assigned several people to keep watch outside her home; as she was hauling discarded items to sell to make a living, a man in white soon repeatedly pretended to make phone calls while following and provoking her, and nearly knocked her over several times; because she had previously experienced a threat to her personal safety when she was beaten during a sensitive period, she was forced to flee and stay away from home for many days to avoid being beaten and sent to the hospital again;

On September 1, 2025, she was again forcibly taken from her home by police from Nanjing’s Jianye District, and later learned that she had been criminally detained on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”; it is reported that she now has lung cancer, while her elderly parents, both of whom are ill, are still at home and urgently need someone to care for them (her father has a stage-three tumor, and her mother is disabled). In September 2026, it was learned that she had been sentenced to probation and released several months earlier. She had previously been held at the Nanjing Detention Center.