Qin Yong-min
Mr. Qin Yong-min is one of the first leaders in the pro-democracy movement in China. He was born on August 11, 1953 in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Qin took part in the Democracy Wall Movement and founded the Sound of Bell magazine. In April 1981, he was arrested and charged with starting an “illegal publication” and forming an “anti-communist revolution” and sentenced to seven years in prison.
In December 1993, Qin and his colleagues drafted a Constitutional Peace Declaration. For his involvement in this project, Qin was sentence to three years of reeducation through labor. In March 1998, he and Xu Wenli founded a human rights organization, China Human Rights Observer but failed to get legal registration for the group. Qin later attempted to establish the Chinese Democracy Party (CDP). When he tried to formally register the CDP as a legal and independent political party in China, Qin’s appeal was not only rejected, but he was arrested and charged with “subversion of the state power.” On December 22, 1998, the Wuhan City Court sentenced Qin to twelve years in prison.
Qin has served almost 10 years of his sentence in Hanyang prison and has developed serious health problems that remain untreated, causing his eyes to deteriorate to almost complete blindness. Since his imprisonment, Qin’s family has been living in poverty.
Initiatives for China calls for international attention to this case, and is working for his early release on medical grounds.
