Jiang Lijun

Who is Jiang Lijun?

Jiang Lijun is a Chinese freelance writer. He has been detained by the Chinese government since November 2002 for posting articles on the Internet which the government considered subversive. He is a native of Tieling in Liaoning.

The articles written by Jiang included an open letter to the Sixteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which called for democratic reform.

Jiang was detained on November 6, 2002 and formally arrested on December 14, 2003, for “Internet writing and publishing dissident articles”. He was charged with “Inciting subversion of the state power”. On November 28, 2003 the no.2 Intermediate People's Court of Beijing found Jiang guilty and sentenced him to imprisonment for four years, and deprivation of political rights for one year. Since this time Jiang has being held in Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning.

A draft email found on his Yahoo page containing proposals for a more democratic China was the principal evidence against him. Writing this draft was considered by the Government as taking part in “subversive activities that aim to undermine the authority of the Communist Party”.

In April 2006, Reporters Without Borders, which has been actively seeking Jiang's release, revealed that Yahoo! may have aided Chinese authorities in convicting Jiang by providing information about Jiang's email accounts on its servers in Hong Kong.