Yang Li
Yang Li is a land and woman human rights defender from Jintan, Changzhou City, China. She has publicly spoken out on issues such as illegal land expropriation, forced eviction and demolition. Her work raises awareness about the human rights impact these have in her hometown, Jintan, including the displacement of the local population and the lack of compensation for those affected since 2014. The woman human rights defender has defended the rights of those forcibly evicted and pursued justice by bringing cases before the Jiangsu High People's Court for more than a decade. Having had little success before the Court, she filed a petition before Beijing’s National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration in 2023. As a result of her human rights work, she has faced serious reprisals from the authorities, including denial of access to medical treatment, arbitrary detention and torture.
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.
