China: Diary of a Disappearance – Reflections after my Release
Liu Dejun is a Chinese human rights defender who began his human rights works by educating migrant workers in a factory in Guangzhou about their rights and Chinese labour laws. He was subsequently fired, after which he started to write essays about human rights and democracy for online publication. In 2007 he set up a NGO providing legal assistance and education to migrant workers and the following year he was detained for ten days after giving out leaflets in Guangzhou calling for political reform. In 2009 he turned his attention to the rights of petitioners in Beijing and was involved in a number of high profile human rights cases. In 2010 he was abducted by the police in the middle of the night, beaten up, driven a mountainous area in the suburbs of Beijing and dumped on a roadside. The artist Ai Weiwei later made a documentary (Chinese only) about these events. Liu Dejun persisted in his human rights work and in 2011 he was one ...