Tang Jitian () is a human rights lawyer in the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Based in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, he is a prominent figure in the

Weiquan The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early ...

(rights defending) movement, and has defended victims of illegal land requisitions,

Falun Gong Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. ''Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora'', pp. 23–24, 33, 119 ...

adherents, HIV/AIDS victims, and other vulnerable groups, including fellow human rights lawyers.Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers
Tang Jitian
Accessed 18 May 2012. Due to the politically sensitive nature of Tang's cases, he has met with reprisals from Chinese authorities. In 2010, he was permanently disbarred, though he has continued his rights advocacy. He has been placed under house arrest, and detained on several occasions. In 2014, Tang and three other lawyers were detained for investigating the detention of several members of

. Tang claimed to have been tortured and suffering multiple fractures during his 15-day detention. In 2017 he was turned back by border guards at

Lo Wu Control Point Lo Wu Control Point () is a Hong Kong immigration control point in Lo Wu, New Territories. It sits within the Frontier Closed Area that runs along the border with mainland China. Its counterpart across the border is the Luohu Port in Shenzhen, ...

when attempting to visit Hong Kong for medical treatment, and advised that he was prohibited from leaving mainland China due to national security reasons. In December 2021, Tang vanished before arriving in Beijing for a human rights event hosted by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

and remained missing at the start of the 2022 Winter Olympics; his relatives believed him to be held in a form of secret detention commonly applied to dissidents in China.

Legal career and advocacy

Tang Jitian was born in

Yanji Yanji (; Chosŏn'gŭl: 연길, ''Yeon-gil;'' Hangul: 옌지, ''Yenji;'' alternately romanized as Yenki) is a county-level city in the east of China's Jilin Province, and is the seat of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Its population i ...

Jilin Jilin (; alternately romanized as Kirin or Chilin) is one of the three provinces of Northeast China. Its capital and largest city is Changchun. Jilin borders North Korea ( Rasŏn, North Hamgyong, Ryanggang and Chagang) and Russia (Prim ...

province in northeast China in 1969. He began his legal career in

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

province in 2005, and subsequently relocated to Beijing to work with the Anhui Law Firm. There, he has taken on a variety of human rights causes, including representing petitioners subjected to reeducation through labor camps, victims of forced eviction, parents of children poisoned by melamine-tainted milk, religious minorities, and others. Tang was also a signatory of

Charter 08 Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by 303 Chinese dissident intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting its name and style from ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tang, Jitian Northeast Normal University alumni 20th-century Chinese lawyers 21st-century Chinese lawyers Chinese human rights activists Weiquan movement Living people 1969 births