Lu Siwei

Lu Siwei (卢思位) is a human rights lawyer based in Chengdu, Sichuan province. He has provided legal assistance to victims of human rights violations and is outspoken about incidents of social injustice and the suffering of vulnerable groups. His work has focused on human rights issues such as freedom of expression, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture, forced eviction, and demolition of personal properties.

Over the years he has defended Chengdu residents who were prosecuted for making a liquor bottle label commemorating the 1989 pro-democracy movement, conducted advocacy surrounding the suspicious death of a middle school student in Luzhou county, Sichuan province, launched a signature petition urging the National People’s Congress, China's legislature, to initiate a special investigative committee to investigate allegations of torture in the “709 Crackdown” on human rights lawyers across China in 2015, and launched a signature petition urging the Sichuan provincial delegation to the National People’s Congress to question the Ministry of Environmental Protection on toxic smog affecting Chinese cities. More recently, he has defended fellow human rights lawyers who are facing criminal prosecution, including Chen Jiahong, Yu Wensheng, Qin Yongpei, and Wang Quanzhang. He was hired by family to defend one of the 12 Hong Kong youth activists who were intercepted by Chinese authorities in August 2020 while fleeing to Taiwan by boat, but the authorities refused to allow him to meet his client and repeatedly threatened him to abandon the case.