Huang Qi
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- For the Chinese herb huang qi, see Astragalus.
Huang Qi (Chinese: 黃琦), a Chinese webmaster and human rights activist. He was imprisoned from June 2000 to June 2005.
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[edit] Biography
Huang is a wireless-electronics graduate of Sichuan University. He is an Internet pioneer in China, the owner and webmaster of an Internet site originally set up to put out news about people who had disappeared in China.
[edit] 64Tianwang.com
Huang and his wife, Zeng Li, from Chengdu in Sichuan, set up and registered their website, www.64tianwang.com, in June 1998. The numbers 6-4 are a clear reference to June 4, the date anniversary of the PLA crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. For a fee, people could post information there about missing friends or family members, including those abducted in rural areas and sold into marriage.
Huang managed the site, helped to decide on its content, and actively investigated cases, ultimately aiding in the rescue of several trafficked girls. The site won praise from many official Chinese media outlets – China Youth Daily called it one of the most significant Internet events in 1999 – and Chinese journalists visited Huang to learn how to "report the pain of the people."
[edit] Imprisonment
Huang was arrested on June 3, 2000 – the day before the 11th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, accused of posting on his website articles about the protests written by dissidents living abroad. The website was used by the independence movement in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and the Falun Gong.
He was jailed in July 2000 at the Detention Centre No. 1 in Chengdu. Former cellmates said he was beaten regularly and denied medicine he needed. Huang was ultimately tried for "subversion" in August 2001. He was charged under articles 103, 105, 55 and 56 of the Criminal Law and tried in secret by the Chengdu Intermediate Court in August 2001.[1] He was detained without sentencing until May 9, 2003, when he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Reporters Without Borders awarded its Cyber-Freedom Prize to Huang Qi in 2004.
On June 4, 2005, Huang Qi was released from jail after completing his sentence. He told Radio Free Asia that he wants to resume his web site dedicated to the memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. "I will do my best to resume the Tianwang Web site. When it was first created it was for very few people. But I now realize that there are many like-minded people," he said.
[edit] References
- ^ "APPEALS: Huang Qi, Prisoner of conscience, Sichuan Province", Amnesty International. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
