Wu Gan (, born 14 February 1972) is a Chinese

blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

and

human rights activist A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing campai ...

from

Fuqing (; Foochow Romanized: Hók-chiăng; also romanized as Hokchia) is a county-level city of Fujian Province, China, it is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Fuzhou. Geography Fuqing is located in the north-central part of ...

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capi ...

who uses the internet name "Super Vulgar Butcher" () or "Butcher Wu Gan" (), and is known for his provocative signs and banners in support of his protests. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in December 2017 for subversion of state power, and is currently incarcerated in Qingliu Prison in

Human rights activities

Wu has been involved in human rights activism since May 2008 when he supported the woman charged with murder in the

Deng Yujiao incident The Deng Yujiao incident () occurred on 10 May 2009 at a hotel in Badong County, Hubei. Deng Yujiao, a 21-year-old pedicure worker, tried to rebuff the advances of Deng Guida (; no relation), director of the local township business promotions off ...

. Since then he has advocated online and on the streets for a number of human rights cases, using provocative T-shirts, banners and performance art to highlight the cases he fights for. In one case he drew a

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...

moustache on the photo of the chief judge, along with a demand to know what bribe he would accept. In spring 2015 Wu started working for the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, but on 20 May 2015 he was detained by police in

Nanchang Nanchang (, ; ) is the capital of Jiangxi Province, People's Republic of China. Located in the north-central part of the province and in the hinterland of Poyang Lake Plain, it is bounded on the west by the Jiuling Mountains, and on the east ...

, and on 7 July he was formerly arrested and charged with inciting subversion of state power, and then in 16 August he was charged with subversion of state power. In August 2017, after two years in detention, Wu was put on trial in

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

, charged with subversion of state power. On 26 December 2017 he was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison, which is one of the harshest sentences given to a Chinese human rights activist since the start of China's crackdown on lawyers and activists in 2015. On 4 January 2018, Ge Yongxi one of Wu Gan's lawyers, confirmed that Wu Gan has filed an appeal against his 8-year sentence. In addition to the appeal, Wu Gan petitioned the Chinese judiciary to ask that the National People's Congress either amend or nullify subversion-related charges and punishments as stipulated by article 105 of the nation's Criminal Law. On 8 November 2018, while he was in prison, all of the 30,277 tweets made by Wu Gan between November 2009 and May 2015 (up to when he was arrested and so stopped tweeting) were deleted by a

bot Bot may refer to: Sciences Computing and technology * Chatbot, a computer program that converses in natural language * Internet bot, a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet **a Spambot, an internet bot des ...

. Wu's father, Xu Xiaoshun (), visited his son at Qingliu Prison in

in early March 2019, and reported that Wu Gan was suffering from poor health and a possible spinal injury due to the mistreatment and torture he had suffered while in pre-trial detention.

References

External links

1972 births Chinese dissidents Chinese human rights activists Chinese prisoners and detainees Living people People from Fuqing {{China-bio-stub

Human rights activities

See also

References

External links