Ding Lingjie
"I know there may be a day when I am sent to prison, but all that I do, I do with a clear conscience and heart. For myself, for my posterity, for the development of society, and in order that we may sooner reach an impartial justice, I do all this willingly".
Ding Lingjie is an editor for Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, an online platform documenting civil rights violations across China. In 2017, Ding Lingjie created a new social media platform entitled “Petitioner Voice” to highlight government oppression of petitioners, a highly persecuted body of Chinese citizens who travel to major cities to “petition” local issues at higher levels of government. The topics of Ding Lingjie’s written work ranges from human rights issues, such as Chinese judicial procedure, to victims of human rights abuses, including Liu Xiaobo, Liu Feiyue, and victims of China’s “709 crackdown”. Ding Lingjie is also a founder of the organization “China Human Rights Watch”, which has made repeated unsuccessful attempts to register itself with Chinese authorities.
Chinese human rights defenders work across a wide spectrum of issues, engaging with rights violators on numerous levels. Many of China’s most prominent and most stringently prosecuted defenders have worked to protect the health and well-being of victims of physically harmful government and corporate practice, including forced abortion, food health scandals, environmental pollution, and corrupt or negligent government action leading to preventable loss of life. Other Chinese HRDs work to protect the economic rights of Chinese citizens, advocating for victims of property appropriation, forced demolition, and violation of labour contracts. Still others take on cases of freedom of expression for China’s ethnic and religious minorities.
