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第117案 | 何德普Case 117 | He Depu

何德普（1956年10月28日生于北京，原北京有机化工厂工人，后调入中国社会科学院办公室工作），1979年参加西单民主墙运动、创办民刊《北京青年》并以独立候选人身份参选区县人大，1989年参加民主运动，1993年与1995年两度参加为王丹征集签名，1998年参与组建中国民主党并再度参选，后接任该党京津党部负责人，2000年3月被社科院辞退。2002年11月他与另外191人联署致中共十六大公开信，提出为八九民运平反、释放政治犯、人大批准《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》、扩大直选等六点要求，11月4日在北京家中被带走，与外界隔绝四个月：逮捕文书2003年1月30日才签发，家属3月6日才获通知。2003年11月6日，北京市第一中级人民法院以煽动颠覆国家政权罪判处他有期徒刑八年、剥夺政治权利二年，判决所据是他的组党职务与网上文章。狱中他高血压恶化、保外就医被拒，2008年写信给国际奥委会主席罗格揭露狱况。2011年1月下旬刑满出狱（日期有1月23日、1月24日与2月9日三说），出狱当日遭四名警察殴打；此后两会、六四仍被监控，2018年当选独立中文笔会理事，2021年后无公开记录。He Depu (born 28 October 1956 in Beijing; originally a worker at the Beijing Organic Chemical Factory, later transferred to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) joined the 1979 Democracy Wall movement, founded the independent magazine Beijing Youth and stood as an independent candidate in district elections; took part in the 1989 democracy movement; joined signature campaigns for Wang Dan in 1993 and 1995; helped form the China Democracy Party in 1998 and stood for election again; then took over its Beijing–Tianjin branch before being dismissed from the Academy in March 2000. In November 2002 he joined 191 others in an open letter to the 16th Party Congress demanding rehabilitation of the 1989 movement, release of political prisoners, ratification of the ICCPR and broader direct elections; he was taken from his home on 4 November 2002 and held incommunicado for four months — arrest papers were issued only on 30 January 2003 and his family notified only on 6 March. On 6 November 2003 the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced him to eight years for inciting subversion, plus two years' deprivation of political rights, on the basis of his party posts and online writings. In prison his hypertension worsened, medical parole was refused, and in 2008 he wrote from prison to IOC President Jacques Rogge about prison conditions. Released on completion of sentence in late January 2011 (the date exists in 23 January, 24 January and 9 February versions), he was beaten by four police officers on release day; surveillance followed at every Two Sessions and June Fourth, he was elected a director of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre in 2018, and after 2021 there is no public record.

Time

Taken from his Beijing home on 4 November 2002 and held incommunicado until his family was notified on 6 March 2003; the Beijing Public Security Bureau's arrest papers were issued on 30 January 2003 (Chinese Wikipedia additionally records criminal detention on 28 January 2003); tried on 14 October 2003 in a hearing of about two hours (for the date layers, see the text and the Verification Note); sentenced on 6 November 2003; released on completion of his term in late January 2011 — the release date exists in three versions, 23 January, 24 January and 9 February 2011 — and beaten by police on the day of his release

Place

Beijing (place of seizure, detention and trial); Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court (sentencing court; judgment No. (2003) Yi Zhong Xing Chu Zi No. 2933); Beijing No. 2 Prison (place of imprisonment); Zhanlan Road police substation, Xicheng District (where, according to an HRIC eyewitness account, the terms of his deprivation of political rights were read to him on release day)

Person

He Depu (born 28 October 1956 in Beijing; originally a worker at the Beijing Organic Chemical Factory, later transferred to an office post at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; participant in the 1979 Democracy Wall movement and founder of the magazine Beijing Youth; a co-founder of the China Democracy Party in 1998 and later head of its Beijing–Tianjin branch); his wife Jia Jianying (Reporters Without Borders' 2004 appeal writes her name as "Jia Jiangying"; the two spellings are carried in parallel — see the Verification Note); his mother (name not publicly recorded)

Charges & Sentence

"Inciting subversion of state power": eight years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights, imposed by the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on 6 November 2003, on the basis of his 1999–2002 posts in the China Democracy Party's supervisory committee and Beijing–Tianjin branch and of articles and open letters he published or signed online

Classification

Eight years for helping to found a party, standing in elections, writing essays and signing an open letter to the 16th Party Congress; the letter's 192 signatories made peaceful demands — rehabilitation of the 1989 democracy movement, release of political prisoners, ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and broader direct elections

Current Status

After his 2011 release he lived under two years' deprivation of political rights and continuing surveillance: placed under closer surveillance and movement restrictions before the 2013 National People's Congress session, and under 24-hour surveillance on the eve of the June Fourth anniversary in 2014 (HRIC compilation); elected a director of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre in 2018; a post on his own Twitter account in May 2021 is recorded in a single transmission chain (see the Verification Note); of his health and circumstances after that there is no public record

What Happened

The He Depu case has to be read through the arc of one man's forty years. He was born in Beijing on 28 October 1956 and worked at the Beijing Organic Chemical Factory (Chinese Wikipedia). When the Democracy Wall movement rose at Xidan in 1979, he was twenty-three: he took part, founded the independent magazine Beijing Youth, and stood as an independent candidate in elections to a Beijing district people's congress — for which the factory leadership denounced him for bourgeois liberalisation (Chinese Wikipedia, drawing on his own accounts). He was later transferred to an office post at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He participated in the democracy movement of 1989, and in 1993 and 1995 he joined signature campaigns for the Tiananmen activist Wang Dan (Human Rights in China, hereafter HRIC, 2011; PEN International via IFEX, 11 February 2011). In 1998 he helped form the China Democracy Party and stood a second time as an independent candidate, this time for the Beijing Municipal People's Congress (Chinese Wikipedia).

The China Democracy Party was crushed systematically: at the end of 1998 Xu Wenli, Qin Yongmin and Wang Youcai were given long subversion sentences, and on 2 August 1999 Zha Jianguo and Gao Hongming were tried and sentenced in Beijing (Human Rights Watch, Nipped in the Bud). He Depu tried to attend that trial as a spectator. Two days beforehand, on 30 July, he went to the reception office of the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court to ask about a visitor's permit and was told permits were not issued in advance; on 2 August he arrived at 7:30 a.m., the first applicant of the day, but police had cordoned off the building's north and west entrances, and after an official inspected his identity card at 8:30 he was still refused a permit — then detained by plainclothes officers and held in a police station for eight hours (Human Rights Watch, Nipped in the Bud, recording the episode in its note 90). As the party's cadres were jailed one after another, He Depu took over as head of its Beijing–Tianjin branch and kept working (Chinese Wikipedia). In March 2000 he was dismissed from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Chinese Wikipedia; English Wikipedia's version of when and why he lost that job conflicts with this — see the Verification Note).

In November 2002, on the eve of the 16th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, He Depu joined 191 other dissidents in signing an open letter to the Congress setting out six demands for political reform (Reporters Without Borders, hereafter RSF, via IFEX, 8 November 2004; World Organisation Against Torture, hereafter OMCT, urgent appeal of 12 March 2003). On 4 November 2002 he was taken from his Beijing home (RSF, HRIC and PEN agree). The seizure was not matched by any notification: he was held completely incommunicado, and his wife Jia Jianying learned of it only on the evening of 6 March 2003, when the case officer, Wang Yu, told her that the Beijing Public Security Bureau had issued arrest papers on 30 January 2003 — the man had by then been held for four months, the paperwork had been completed almost three months after the seizure, the family's notification came more than a month later still, and no explanation for the delay was given (OMCT, 12 March 2003, relaying HRIC information).

On 14 October 2003 the case was heard at the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, in a hearing of about two hours. (English Wikipedia mis-dates this hearing to 14 October 2002 — impossible, since he had not yet been arrested; this page treats the year as a copying error and corrects it explicitly in the Verification Note.) On 6 November 2003 the same court convicted him of inciting subversion of state power and sentenced him to eight years' imprisonment plus two years' deprivation of political rights; according to Chinese Wikipedia, only his wife was permitted into the courtroom to hear the verdict. The judgment — No. (2003) Yi Zhong Xing Chu Zi No. 2933 — found as "criminal facts" that from early 1999 to November 2002 he had headed the China Democracy Party's supervisory committee and its Beijing–Tianjin branch, and had published or co-signed online articles including the party's New Century Declaration and an open letter to President Bush on his February visit to China, containing such statements as "end one-party dictatorship" and "establish a genuine democratic constitutional order of separated and balanced powers" — all of it words and offices, with no allegation of any violent act or violent plan. He served the eight years at Beijing No. 2 Prison.

In prison his health deteriorated steadily: hypertension brought headaches and dizziness, he had ear problems, and he was allowed out into the prison yard only twice a week (RSF, 2004; HRIC, 2011). In 2007 his wife disclosed that, in construction work preparing Beijing No. 2 Prison for the 2008 Olympics, prisoners had been denied their regular outdoor exercise for ten days and confined in close quarters in temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (HRIC, 2011, relaying her 2007 disclosure). He Depu himself was threatened with the loss of family visits over the disclosure of prison conditions (HRIC case update, 27 September 2007, title recorded in HRIC's link directory). In February 2008 the prison authorities turned down his wife's application for medical parole on his behalf (HRIC, 2011). That same year, from inside the prison, he wrote an open letter to International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge arguing that Olympic preparations had not improved but worsened prison conditions, that food and medical care in prison were extremely poor, and that political prisoners suffered worst (HRIC, 6 August 2008).

The date he walked out exists in three versions, and this page keeps them in separate layers, never merged. PEN International states that he was freed on 23 January 2011 on completion of his eight-year term (PEN International via IFEX, 11 February 2011; RSF's report of 3 March 2011 likewise gives 23 January). English and Chinese Wikipedia both give 24 January 2011. HRIC's release-day report, as quoted inside PEN's own release, says he walked out of a Beijing prison on 9 February 2011. On what all three agree is this: shortly after he walked out, because he resisted being shoved into a police vehicle, he was beaten by four police officers and injured in the neck and hands, then taken to the Zhanlan Road police substation in Xicheng District, where officers read him the terms of his two years' deprivation of political rights, which include a prohibition on criticising the government; according to an informed source, he replied that he was not afraid and would speak out (HRIC, 2011). He summed up his situation himself, in words recorded by Chinese Wikipedia: out of the small prison, into the big prison. In the decade that followed, his name kept surfacing — on sensitive-date surveillance lists, in PEN election results — until the public record thinned out.

Early Life: A Chemical-Plant Worker, Democracy Wall and Beijing Youth

He Depu started in a factory. Chinese Wikipedia records that he was a worker at the Beijing Organic Chemical Factory who, in 1979, joined the Democracy Wall movement — the season when a wall at Xidan in Beijing filled with big-character posters and ordinary workers and clerks came out to run independent journals and talk democracy. He was one of them, and the journal he founded was called Beijing Youth. In the same period he stood as an independent candidate in elections to a Beijing district and county people's congress. For a chemical-plant worker to publish his own magazine and run for a local people's congress in his own name was, in itself, a direct challenge to the idea that elections were a formality; the factory leadership's label for him was bourgeois liberalisation (Chinese Wikipedia, citing his own account materials). Two details of this early record are worth filing carefully. First, the "crimes" for which he was eventually sentenced consisted entirely of party work and writing — and his political life had begun with the two activities the system nominally permits: publishing and standing in a grassroots election. Second, Chinese Wikipedia describes him as a Christian; that description appears in that single source only, is graded unverified on this page, and nothing elsewhere in the text is built on it.

The move from chemical plant to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was unusual. Chinese Wikipedia records only that he was "later transferred to work in the Academy's office"; the year and the exact post are not publicly recorded. The Academy is the state's premier think tank, and that a man who had run an independent journal and stood as an independent candidate in the Democracy Wall period could be working in its offices says something about the relatively loose air of the 1980s. His dismissal from the Academy in March 2000 sends the opposite signal: by then the China Democracy Party had been proscribed, its cadres jailed in batches, and he was carrying on as head of its Beijing–Tianjin branch. English Wikipedia says he "lost his job at the Social Sciences Academy after standing as a candidate in local elections in 1990" — the year and the causal chain both conflict with Chinese Wikipedia, which records candidacies in 1979 and 1998 and dismissal in March 2000. This page takes the Chinese version's timeline as its main record and archives the English version's "1990" in the Verification Note as a transmission error, not adopted.

1989, the Wang Dan Petitions, and the 1990s

In the spring of 1989 He Depu took part in Beijing's democracy movement (HRIC's 2011 release describes him as a participant; of the details of his experience there is no public record, and this page does not invent one for him). After the crackdown, open activity contracted sharply, and his mode of work shifted to petitions and solidarity campaigns: in 1993 and again in 1995 he joined signature campaigns for Wang Dan — the 1989 student leader, released in 1993 and re-arrested in 1995 — which were among the signature public actions of Beijing's dissident circle in those years (HRIC, 2011; echoed in PEN's release). Petitions of that kind look mild, yet they were one of the forms the authorities tolerated least: a petition turns scattered individuals into a list of names. The 192-name open letter of 2002 was the continuation of exactly that line — and this time the names on the list became an index for arrests.

One further 1990s record comes from the United States State Department's 1999 human rights report: in the weeks before the tenth anniversary of June Fourth, authorities detained China Democracy Party members across the country, and the Beijing names listed as detained for varying periods include He Depu alongside Wang Zhixin, Gao Hongming and Zha Jianguo (US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1999, archived by Refworld). In other words, long before the 2002 arrest he was a regular on the state-security lists: taken away around sensitive dates, held for hours or days, released. That background is what makes the morning of 2 August 1999 intelligible — standing in line at a courthouse to apply for a spectator's permit was not an impulse. It was what he had been doing for years: using the procedures the system itself publishes to test whether those procedures still count for anything.

The China Democracy Party: Founding, Crackdown, and the 1999 Trial He Could Not Enter

1998 was a year of brief political thaw. In June, Wang Youcai and others in Zhejiang publicly announced a Zhejiang preparatory committee of the China Democracy Party; preparatory committees followed around the country, and in Beijing, Xu Wenli, Gao Hongming and Zha Jianguo set up the party's National Congress Preparatory Committee on 2 November 1998 (Human Rights Watch, Nipped in the Bud; Dui Hua Foundation's Zha Jianguo profile). He Depu helped form the party and stood again as a candidate for the Beijing Municipal People's Congress (Chinese Wikipedia). The answer came at year's end: in December 1998 Xu Wenli received thirteen years, Qin Yongmin twelve and Wang Youcai eleven, all for subversion. In 1999 the suppression went nationwide; Human Rights Watch counts at least thirty-four CDP members sentenced on attempted-subversion-type charges, with terms of up to thirteen years (Human Rights Watch, same report).

On 2 August 1999 the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court tried Zha Jianguo and Gao Hongming. Human Rights Watch's report preserves, in the space of one footnote, the whole of what happened to He Depu that morning, and it deserves to be filed in substance: two days before the trial, on 30 July, he went to the court's reception office to ask about a visitor's permit and was told by a woman there that permits were not given out in advance. On 2 August he went early and at 7:30 a.m. was the first to apply for a permit. But police had cordoned off the north and west entrances of the building and were not letting people in. When the office opened at 8:30, a male official received him; He showed his identity card and asked to attend the trial of Zha Jianguo and Gao Hongming; the official told him permits were issued only under some first-come rule — the report's phrasing at this point is convoluted, and this page records only the outcome: no permit was issued to him. He was then detained by plainclothes police and kept in a police station for eight hours (Human Rights Watch, same report). The trial's outcome: Zha Jianguo received nine years plus two years' deprivation of political rights, Gao Hongming eight years plus two years' deprivation; on 17 September 1999 the Beijing High People's Court rejected their appeals (Human Rights Watch, same report).

On its own, the episode is just a citizen failing to spectate at a public trial. In He Depu's file it is a pivotal page. Three years later the same courthouse and the same family of charges put him in the dock — and the sentences handed down that day, nine years and eight years, predicted his own eight years almost exactly. By then the CDP's Beijing–Tianjin branch had been all but wiped out, with Xu Wenli, Zha Jianguo and Gao Hongming successively imprisoned, and He Depu still took over as its head (Chinese Wikipedia, citing biographical compilations). His own judgment later stated the point with precision: from early 1999 to November 2002 he headed, in turn, the CDP's supervisory committee and its Beijing–Tianjin branch. That was the first of his "crimes" — holding office in a proscribed organisation that has no record of any violent act.

The 2002 Open Letter: 192 Names and Six Demands

The Sixteenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party opened in Beijing on 8 November 2002 — the Party's once-a-decade leadership-succession congress. On its eve, an open letter signed by 192 dissidents was published online, addressed to the Congress and setting out six demands for political reform. The fullest record of the six is OMCT's urgent appeal of 12 March 2003: reassessment — rehabilitation — of the 1989 democracy movement; the right of political exiles to return to China; restoration of the political rights of political prisoner Zhao Ziyang and his release from house arrest; release of all prisoners of conscience; the National People's Congress to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and bring domestic law into conformity with international treaties; and expansion of democratic elections from the village and township level up to national elections (OMCT appeal). RSF's version compresses the six into: rehabilitation of the 1989 movement, exiles' right of return, release of political prisoners including Zhao Ziyang, NPC ratification of the ICCPR, and free elections (RSF via IFEX, 8 November 2004). The two versions agree in substance and differ in detail; both are archived.

The letter contains not one word calling for violence. Its form was an open letter to the Party's own congress; its addressee was the Party's own assembly; and what it asked for — ratification of a covenant the Chinese government had already signed in 1998, expansion of elections that nominally exist in China's own constitution — was written inside the system's own textual promises. Yet signing it became the source of criminal liability. Around the letter's publication the authorities moved against the signatories: RSF counts seven online dissidents jailed in the following weeks — besides He Depu, Zhao Changqing, Sang Jiancheng, Dai Xuezhong, Han Lifa, Jiang Lijun and Ouyang Yi, all signatories (RSF, 2004). Amnesty International's document of 14 January 2003 likewise lists He Depu among seven detained in connection with organising or signing the petition to the 16th Congress (its list spells one name differently from RSF's version; see the Verification Note). OMCT's first appeal, of 9 January 2003, records that signatories were being secretly detained in several cities, that officials refused to notify families of the reasons or the places of detention, and that Ouyang Yi was held in Sichuan, Dai Xuezhong in Shanghai and He Depu in Beijing (OMCT, 9 January 2003).

Taken on 4 November: Four Months Incommunicado

On 4 November 2002 He Depu was taken from his home in Beijing (RSF's 2004 appeal: arrested at his Beijing home; HRIC and PEN likewise record detention in November 2002). The 16th Congress opened on 8 November; his seizure came four days before the opening and almost simultaneously with the letter's publication. For the next four months he legally disappeared: his family received no notice, and did not know where he was held or why. OMCT's March 2003 appeal names this period plainly — incommunicado detention from 4 November 2002 to 6 March 2003 (OMCT, relaying HRIC).

The order in which the paperwork was completed deserves its own record. Chinese Wikipedia states that he was criminally detained on 28 January 2003 and formally arrested on 30 January 2003, on suspicion in both cases of subversion of state power — by then he had already been held for nearly three months. OMCT's version corroborates the 30 January date from the family's side: only on the evening of 6 March 2003 did the case officer, Wang Yu, inform his wife that the Beijing Public Security Bureau's arrest papers were dated 30 January, and no explanation was given for why notification of the family came more than a month after the formal arrest (OMCT, 12 March 2003). One source records the paperwork dates, the other the notification date; laid together they form a complete picture: seize the man first, complete the paperwork later, notify the family last — each step later than the time limits written in China's own Criminal Procedure Law. HRIC issued a news item titled "Dissident He Depu Formally Arrested" on 3 March 2003 (HRIC link directory appended to its 2011 release), three days before the family's 6 March notification; the two nodes are archived in parallel, and this page does not rank them.

What four months of incommunicado detention meant for the family, the public record does not preserve in Jia Jianying's own words from that period, and this page does not write them for her. What can be confirmed is procedural: without a detention notice, the family had no standing to retain a lawyer; without a place of detention, they could not deliver clothes or deposit money; the man had been erased. Other signatories seized in the same sweep, among them Liu Di — the "Stainless Steel Mouse" — and Li Yibin, were in similar positions (Amnesty International, 14 January 2003). He Depu's own later account of that first detention — chained to a wooden bed for 85 days — is recorded in the dedicated section below at its proper evidence level and is not merged with this procedural record.

Trial: Two Hours, One Spectator, and Judgment No. 2933

The trial's date layer is the point in this case that most needs patient disassembly, because a widely copied error circulates in the standard compilations. English Wikipedia states that He Depu "was tried in a two-hour hearing on 14 October 2002." That date is logically impossible — he was not taken until 4 November 2002, so on 14 October he had not yet been arrested. Having checked the BBC Chinese report dated 14 October 2003 cited by Chinese Wikipedia against the rest of the record, this page's handling is: the hearing date is 14 October 2003, and the English Wikipedia "2002" is a year error. The roughly two-hour length is attested by several sources (Chinese Wikipedia; RSF's 2011 report), though they attach it to different nodes: Chinese Wikipedia's sentence structure ties the two hours to the sentencing session of 6 November, while RSF's 2011 report writes of eight years imposed "at the end of a sham two-hour trial on 6 November 2002" — the year again wrong, and hearing and sentencing collapsed into one day. This page's main record: heard on 14 October 2003, the hearing lasting about two hours; sentenced on 6 November 2003. All variants are preserved in the Verification Note, none silently smoothed away.

On 6 November 2003 the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court convicted He Depu of inciting subversion of state power and sentenced him to eight years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights (HRIC, PEN and RSF agree). Chinese Wikipedia records that at the sentencing session only his wife Jia Jianying was permitted into the courtroom to hear the verdict — at a nominally public proceeding, the gallery held exactly one person, the defendant's wife. Set that beside 1999, when He Depu himself was refused entry to the Zha–Gao trial and detained for eight hours: four years earlier he could not get into someone else's courtroom; four years later no one could get into his. Of an appeal there is no public record: no reliable source consulted records an appeal or a second-instance change, and this page treats the question as one with no public record.

This page has checked the judgment's text as quoted in full by Chinese Wikipedia (Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, Criminal Judgment (2003) Yi Zhong Xing Chu Zi No. 2933). The facts found fall in two parts. The offices: from early 1999 to November 2002 he headed, successively, the "illegal organisation" China Democracy Party's supervisory committee and its Beijing–Tianjin branch. The speech: in that period he repeatedly published or co-signed articles on multiple websites, including the China Democracy Party's Declaration Welcoming the New Century, an Open Letter to President Bush on His February Visit to China, a CDP address to the 16th Party Congress, and a piece on two labour and peasant movement organisers. The "inciting" statements the judgment quotes include: deleting the "Four Principles" from the Constitution; that "the essence of the Communist Party is dictatorship"; that if the CCP did not abandon Marxism-Leninism and one-party dictatorship the outcome could only be "the CCP perishes, China rises"; the demand to "end one-party dictatorship"; and to "establish a genuine democratic constitutional order of separated and balanced powers." This page's quotation from the judgment is kept at paraphrase level, with verbatim quotation held under fifty words. Read the whole list and one fact stands out: everything the eight years correspond to is holding office in a peaceful party, plus writing articles and signing an open letter. Nowhere does the judgment accuse him of organising, plotting or carrying out any act of violence.

Eight Years Inside: Beijing No. 2 Prison, Health and Visits

He Depu served his sentence at Beijing No. 2 Prison (HRIC and PEN agree). RSF's appeal of November 2004 preserves a health reading from his second year inside: he suffered from high blood pressure, which gave him headaches and dizziness, and he was allowed to exercise in the prison courtyard only twice a week; his wife Jia Jiangying had been able to visit him on 9 October 2004 (RSF via IFEX, 8 November 2004). HRIC's 2011 release adds that his health in prison was poor, with ear problems alongside the hypertension. The public record on his deteriorating health thickens around 2008: HRIC issued a case update on 2 April 2008 under a title stating that the jailed democracy activist's health was at risk (HRIC link directory). This page was unable to obtain that update's full text during verification; its title and date are archived from HRIC's own directory and its contents are not expanded here.

In this case, visiting rights were not a welfare provision but a lever. In 2007 his wife took conditions inside Beijing No. 2 Prison public: in construction and renovation work preparing for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, prisoners were deprived of their regular outdoor exercise for ten days and confined in close quarters in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit (HRIC, 2011, relaying Jia's 2007 disclosure). He Depu was then threatened in reprisal: HRIC's case update of 27 September 2007 is titled, in its directory, "He Depu Threatened with Deprivation of Family Visits over Disclosure of Prison Conditions" — the threat's logic was blunt: talk about the inside, and you will not see your family. Whether the threat was carried out and for how long visits were interrupted, there is no public record; this page records the threat itself. December 2007 supplies a side-light on the family's situation: the Independent Chinese PEN Centre had planned a year-end awards dinner in Beijing, and police detained two writers in advance and posted warnings at the homes of dozens of connected people — the warned list included Jia Jianying as the wife of an imprisoned writer, and PEN America's release of 21 December 2007 noted pointedly that Jia and several others had not even heard of the dinner. She had to be knocked on by police over an event she knew nothing about.

In March 2008, ahead of the National People's Congress, the families of Lü Gengsong and He Depu jointly appealed to the NPC (HRIC case update, 3 March 2008, title in the directory). In February 2008 the prison authorities had already turned down Jia's application for medical parole on his behalf (HRIC, 2011). By then the family had walked every channel open to it in eight years — visits, petitions, a medical-parole application — and every channel ended at the same word: no. His own answer from inside is the subject of the next section: a letter to the President of the International Olympic Committee.

The Letter to Rogge from Prison: 2008

On 6 August 2008, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics' opening, HRIC published the open letter He Depu had written in prison to Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (HRIC, 6 August 2008). The letter's central judgement ran exactly against the official narrative: Olympic preparations had not, as the Chinese authorities had promised, improved society — prison conditions had actually worsened; food and medical treatment in prison were extremely poor, and political prisoners suffered the worst (HRIC's 2011 summary of the letter). He wrote that each time Rogge came to Beijing and saw the joyous spectacles, he should know that just ten or so kilometres away Beijing's political prisoners were suffering immensely for the progress of society and the elevation of human civilisation, and that tens of thousands of Beijing prisoners, each holding a bowl half full of boiled vegetables, had their eyes trained on him (the letter's text as published by HRIC; this page's verbatim quotation is held well under fifty words). The timing was no accident: his wife had just brought about the threat to his family visits by disclosing the same prison's Olympic construction conditions, and his medical-parole application had just been refused in February — every line in the letter described conditions he was himself living. How a letter by a serving political prisoner travelled from Beijing No. 2 Prison into the IOC President's hands is not publicly recorded, and this page makes no guess. What can be confirmed is that the text exists, that HRIC published it on 6 August 2008, and that its contents corroborate, and are corroborated by, his wife's 2007 disclosure and HRIC's April 2008 health update — three independent records from the same period.

Release: Three Dates and a Beating on the Day

The release date is this case's second conflict that must be handled in layers, and the three versions each have a source; none may be merged. Version one, 23 January: PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee reported on 11 February 2011 that He Depu had been freed on 23 January 2011 after completing his eight-year term (PEN International via IFEX); RSF's report of 3 March 2011 likewise says he was badly beaten by police officers when he was released on 23 January. Version two, 24 January: English Wikipedia and Chinese Wikipedia both record completion of sentence and release on 24 January 2011; the Chinese version adds that at his release he refused to ride home in the police vehicle arranged by the public security bureau and resisted, clashed with police, then — after shouting "End one-party dictatorship, build a free China; rather death than no freedom" — was subjected to further violence, taken to a police station, and clashed again in argument and scuffles there. Version three, 9 February: the HRIC release-day report quoted within PEN's own release states that He Depu walked out of a Beijing prison on 9 February 2011 on completing his eight-year term — a "today" report seventeen days after the 23 January "freed" date. On term computation, the public sources leave one detail unexplained: he was seized on 4 November 2002 but arrest papers were completed only on 30 January 2003, and a term expiring in late January 2011 broadly matches computation from the formal criminal-detention date — but whether the nearly three months of paperwork-free detention at the start were credited is not publicly recorded. This page's handling: the text and indexes say only "released on completion of sentence in late January 2011 (23 January and 24 January versions)," with HRIC's 9 February release-day version carried alongside, and all three dates preserved in the Timeline and Verification Note.

Underneath the three dates sits a core of fact on which every version agrees: on the day of his release, police beat him. HRIC's eyewitness account is the most specific: shortly after he walked out of the prison, because he resisted being shoved into a police vehicle, four police officers beat him and injured his neck and hands; he was then taken to the Zhanlan Road police substation in Beijing's Xicheng District, where officers read him the provisions of his two years' deprivation of political rights, which include a prohibition on criticising the government; according to an informed source, he said he was not afraid and would speak out (HRIC, 2011). His wife Jia Jianying later told the story in a hearing setting of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and a PEN America retrospective summarised her account as describing how her husband "was beaten by police the moment he arrived home" (PEN America, published 7 November 2012, updated 2024) — the two location formulations, at the prison gate or on the way, and "the moment he arrived home," are archived in parallel, with HRIC's same-day eyewitness version as the main record. Chinese Wikipedia adds that after he got home, friends who tried to visit him were obstructed and could not see him (Chinese Wikipedia). His own summary of that whole day, quoted there, was: out of the small prison, into the big prison. On paper the eight years had ended; in fact the two years of deprivation of political rights began that day, and the surveillance merely changed form.

His Own Account of Torture: Eighty-Five Days and the Holding Centre

This page grades the torture material strictly at the level of HRIC's record: what follows is He Depu's own account, given to an informed source after his release and relayed by HRIC's 2011 release — the subject's-own-account layer. This page found no second independent source confirming each item, and the text presents it in his voice, not upgraded into multi-source fact. He said that when he was first detained, he was made to lie on a wooden bed for 85 days, with his wrists and thighs chained to the bed so that his body formed the shape of the character da (大, "big"). He also described an episode after sentencing, in the Beijing holding centre (遣送处) where he was kept before being sent to prison: a police officer named Liu told him to say that he was guilty; when he refused, the officer ordered four prisoners to beat him; the prisoners kicked him in the back and legs, and all five of them pinned him to the ground, face down, for twenty minutes (HRIC, 2011; PEN's release relays the same episode in slightly compressed form — prisoners kicked him and pinned him down for twenty minutes). HRIC's executive director Sharon Hom, commenting on the release-day beating, said it had taken place just moments after he completed an eight-year term for writing essays and open letters — that is, for exercising the freedom of expression protected by China's own constitution — and that police officers so openly abusing a freed person was the latest indication of a worsening human rights situation in China (HRIC, 2011, paraphrased here from her statement). Beyond these two episodes, of any other forms of ill-treatment during his detention-centre and prison years there is no public record, and this page neither expands nor assembles any.

Impact on the Family

The family's bill in this case can be settled, from the public record, in four entries. The first is four months of no news: the man was taken on 4 November 2002, and his wife learned only on the evening of 6 March 2003 that he had been "formally arrested" — on papers dated 30 January (OMCT, 2003). The second is the scarcity and conditionality of visits: RSF records a single visit, on 9 October 2004, and in 2007, after his wife disclosed prison conditions, he was threatened with deprivation of family visits — visits here were not a right but a lever for shutting him up (HRIC case-update title, 2007; 2011 release). The third is his wife's eight years of public running: disclosing the prison's Olympic construction conditions in 2007; being warned at her door by police in December 2007 over a PEN dinner she had never heard of; co-signing, with the Lü Gengsong family, an appeal to the National People's Congress in March 2008; and filing the medical-parole application that was refused in February 2008 (PEN America, 2007; HRIC, 2008 and 2011). The fourth entry is his own words: according to HRIC's informed source, on his release he said that during his imprisonment his wife and mother had endured great humiliation and pain, and that he deeply regretted not having been able to fulfil his duties as a husband, a son and a father (HRIC, 2011). That sentence establishes that he has children; of their number, names and ages there is no public record, and this page records none. Of his mother's name and circumstances there is likewise no public record.

His wife's name exists in two spellings across this case's sources, and the point must be filed explicitly. RSF's appeal of 8 November 2004 writes "Jia Jiangying" (贾江英). OMCT's 2003 appeal, HRIC's 2011 release, PEN America's 2007 release and Chinese Wikipedia all write "Jia Jianying" (贾建英). This page uses the majority spelling, Jia Jianying, as its main form and flags the "Jiangying" variant at first mention, with the full conflict recorded in the Verification Note. There is no doubt the two spellings denote the same person — but an archive does not silently unify; if the judgment or an original family document surfaces, it is that document that should settle the character.

The International Response

The international record, in chronological order, runs as follows. In January 2003 Amnesty International, writing on the wide use of "subversion" charges to imprison rights activists, named He Depu among seven detained in connection with organising or signing the petition to the 16th Party Congress (Amnesty International, 14 January 2003, archived by its UK section's knowledge hub). The same month OMCT issued successive urgent appeals on the secretly detained signatories, and its 12 March 2003 appeal recorded in full He Depu's four months of incommunicado detention and the family's late notification (OMCT, 9 January and 12 March 2003). In November 2004 RSF protested his continued imprisonment as he entered his third year inside, disclosing his hypertension and the twice-weekly exercise limit (RSF via IFEX, 8 November 2004). During his imprisonment, Swiss Romande PEN and the Independent Chinese PEN Centre adopted him as an honorary member (PEN International, 2011) — for a writer inside, honorary membership means colleagues outside publicly acknowledging him as one of their own and keeping his case voiced. In February 2011 PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee welcomed his release on completion of sentence, thanked those who had campaigned for him, and expressed concern at the release-day beating (PEN International via IFEX, 11 February 2011); in March 2011 RSF placed him in its special report on China's tight grip on released prisoners of conscience, as a textbook case of release followed by intimidation (RSF, 3 March 2011, archived by ecoi.net). In July 2011, at the Independent Chinese PEN Centre's tenth-anniversary gathering in Hong Kong, he was one of the few writers able to attend and speak, addressing frankly the torture of imprisoned colleagues and voicing concern for the Uyghur, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples (ICPC tenth-anniversary release, archived by Ground Report, 23 July 2011) — note that he was still within his deprivation-of-political-rights period that year. His wife, in turn, carried the case into the United States Congress: Jia Jianying described her husband's release-day beating in person at a Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing setting (PEN America retrospective, 2012).

After Release: Two Years Without Political Rights, Sensitive-Date Surveillance, and a PEN Board Seat

For the first two years after release he remained, in law, a person deprived of political rights: a prohibition on criticising the government was among the terms read aloud to him (HRIC, 2011). When the deprivation period expired, the surveillance did not. Ahead of the National People's Congress session in March 2013, the authorities tightened control over dissidents, and He Depu appeared alongside Hu Jia, Ai Weiwei and Lü Gengsong on the lists of those placed under closer surveillance and restrictions on movement (Freedom House, China Media Bulletin No. 82, 7 March 2013, citing Chinese Human Rights Defenders and Radio Free Asia). On the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of June Fourth in 2014, HRIC's compilation shows that on 20 May 2014 a group of Beijing dissidents was placed under 24-hour surveillance, and the list of seven includes He Depu — alongside Zhou Duo, Cao Siyuan, Zhang Zuhua, Kang Yuchun, Ye Jingchun and Li Jinping (HRIC compilation published by the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, updated 6 June 2014). That is to say: more than three years after his release, every Two Sessions and every June Fourth, his life was still arranged by the sensitive-period calendar — people at the door, people following when he went out.

On the other side of the ledger, his standing among fellow writers rose. From 28 March to 9 April 2018 the Independent Chinese PEN Centre held its eighth membership congress online; 115 voting members took part, and nine directors were elected. He Depu was among them, alongside Wang Jinbo, Gao Yu, Zhao Shiying, Tienchi Martin-Liao, Qi Jiazhen, Li Hai, Liu Di and Du Daobin; the Centre's secretariat, in its briefing of 2 May 2018, noted expressly that He Depu and Wang Jinbo had both been jailed in the 1990s for founding the Democracy Party and that their election brought new blood to the board (ICPC Secretariat briefing, 2 May 2018). A man who had served eight years was elected, seven years after his release, to the board of an organisation whose business is rescuing imprisoned writers — the clearest public office of his post-release life in the record. In the ninth congress, held from 29 April to 13 May 2020, his name no longer appears among the elected directors (ICPC ninth-congress briefing): his board term ended in 2020, and of any later role there is no public record.

The last public trace comes from the man himself. Chinese Wikipedia records that he said he had opened a Twitter account under the influence of United States President Trump, and posted photographs of himself taking part in rights-defence activities with Beijing rights defenders; the post it cites is dated 22 May 2021 and was archived on 1 September 2021 (Chinese Wikipedia, citing his own post). That record travels in a single transmission chain and relays his own social-media statements; this page archives it at the single-chain, self-account level. A collected-writings page for him remains on the Independent Chinese PEN Centre's website (external link in Chinese Wikipedia).

Latest Status

The latest records found at this page's verification (4 November 2026) are these. In reliable sources, the most recent record of He Depu's activity is his election as a director of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre in April 2018, with the term ending at the ninth congress's re-election in May 2020 (ICPC Secretariat briefing). After that there is only the single-chain record of his own Twitter post in May 2021. Of anything from September 2021 onward — whether he still lives in Beijing, the later course of his hypertension and ear problems, any further detention or surveillance reported publicly — this page found nothing in the reliable sources consulted: in each case, no public record. This page accordingly records his status as: released on completion of sentence in 2011 and living thereafter under surveillance and sensitive-date controls; a director of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre from 2018 to 2020; still posting publicly in his own name in 2021; and, after that, no public record. Of the full text of his 2002-case judgment, beyond the passage quoted by Chinese Wikipedia, there is no public copy. Of whether he appealed, there is no public record.

Timeline

28 October 1956: He Depu is born in Beijing (English and Chinese Wikipedia agree). 1979: takes part in the Democracy Wall movement, founds the independent magazine Beijing Youth, stands as an independent candidate in Beijing district people's congress elections and is denounced by his factory leadership for bourgeois liberalisation (Chinese Wikipedia). Thereafter: transferred to an office post at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (year not publicly recorded). 1989: participates in the democracy movement (HRIC). 1993 and 1995: joins signature campaigns for Wang Dan (HRIC; PEN). 1998: helps form the China Democracy Party and stands a second time, for the Beijing Municipal People's Congress (Chinese Wikipedia). Eve of the tenth anniversary of June Fourth, 1999: named in the US State Department report among CDP members detained in Beijing (US Department of State, 1999 Country Report). 2 August 1999: refused entry as a spectator to the Zha Jianguo–Gao Hongming trial and detained by plainclothes police for eight hours; Zha and Gao receive nine and eight years that day (Human Rights Watch). Early 1999 to November 2002: heads, in turn, the CDP supervisory committee and its Beijing–Tianjin branch (Judgment (2003) Yi Zhong Xing Chu Zi No. 2933). March 2000: dismissed from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Chinese Wikipedia).

November 2002: signs, with 191 others, the open letter to the 16th Party Congress setting out six demands (RSF; OMCT). 4 November 2002: taken from his Beijing home; incommunicado thereafter (RSF; OMCT). 28 January 2003: criminally detained (Chinese Wikipedia). 30 January 2003: Beijing Public Security Bureau issues arrest papers, on suspicion of subversion of state power (OMCT; Chinese Wikipedia). 3 March 2003: HRIC publishes its "formally arrested" item (HRIC directory). Evening of 6 March 2003: his wife Jia Jianying is finally notified by case officer Wang Yu (OMCT). 14 October 2003: heard at the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, in a hearing of about two hours (this page's main record; English Wikipedia mis-dates it to 14 October 2002 — see the Verification Note). 6 November 2003: the same court sentences him to eight years for inciting subversion of state power plus two years' deprivation of political rights; only his wife is permitted to hear the verdict (HRIC; PEN; Chinese Wikipedia). Thereafter: serves the term at Beijing No. 2 Prison. 9 October 2004: his wife is permitted a visit (RSF). 8 November 2004: RSF reports his hypertension, headaches and dizziness, and twice-weekly yard exercise (RSF).

2007: his wife discloses Beijing No. 2 Prison's Olympic construction conditions; He Depu is threatened with deprivation of family visits (HRIC update of 27 September 2007; 2011 release). 21 December 2007: his wife is among the PEN-connected people warned at home by police (PEN America). February 2008: the prison refuses his wife's medical-parole application on his behalf (HRIC). 3 March 2008: the Lü Gengsong and He Depu families appeal jointly to the National People's Congress (HRIC update title). 2 April 2008: HRIC issues a case update on his health at risk (title per HRIC directory). 6 August 2008: HRIC publishes his prison letter to IOC President Jacques Rogge (HRIC). 23 January / 24 January 2011 (versions in parallel): released on completion of sentence — PEN and RSF give 23 January, English and Chinese Wikipedia 24 January; HRIC's release-day report separately gives walking out on 9 February (see the Verification Note). Release day: beaten by four police officers after refusing to be shoved into a police vehicle, injured in the neck and hands, taken to the Zhanlan Road substation in Xicheng for the reading of his two-year deprivation terms (HRIC eyewitness account). 23 July 2011: speaks at the ICPC tenth-anniversary roundtable in Hong Kong (ICPC anniversary release). 2011 (hearing year per the PEN America retrospective): his wife Jia Jianying recounts his release-day beating at a CECC hearing setting (PEN America). Early March 2013: placed under closer surveillance and movement restrictions before the Two Sessions (Freedom House bulletin, citing CHRD and RFA). 20 May 2014: placed under 24-hour surveillance ahead of June Fourth (HRIC compilation, published by ICPC). April 2018: elected a director of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC Secretariat, briefing of 2 May 2018); not on the board list after the ninth congress's re-election in May 2020. 22 May 2021: a post on his own Twitter account describes opening the account and shows rights-defence activity photographs (single-chain relay in Chinese Wikipedia, archived 1 September 2021). After September 2021: no public record.

Our Take

The first account in the He Depu case is procedural. He was taken on 4 November 2002; the arrest papers were issued on 30 January 2003; his family was notified on 6 March 2003. Lay those three dates side by side and they say more than any commentary: seizure, paperwork, notification were completed in reverse order. China's own Criminal Procedure Law sets clear time limits for notifying a family after detention and clear approval procedures for arrest, and in his case not one of those steps happened on time. The authorities have never even needed to deny this: OMCT's appeal prints the dates plainly, and in more than twenty years no official document has appeared to explain why notification took over a hundred days. When a regime no longer bothers to keep up the appearance of its own law, what remains is force itself.

The second account is the charge. This page has read the judgment paragraph by paragraph: the offices were head of the CDP supervisory committee and of its Beijing–Tianjin branch; the acts were writing articles and signing an open letter; the quoted "evidence" consists of sentences like "end one-party dictatorship" and "establish a genuine democratic constitutional order of separated and balanced powers." Eight years in prison and two years' deprivation of political rights correspond to exactly that. The letter to the 16th Congress deserves particular note: 192 people signed their names to a letter addressed to the Party's own congress, asking the Party to ratify a covenant the Chinese government had itself signed five years earlier and to extend elections upward from the village level. Not one word in it exceeds peaceful expression — and at least seven of its signatories were arrested, He Depu among them with eight years. Arresting people by a signature list is the coldest feature of the case: the authorities did not need to find anyone "making trouble," because the signatories had delivered their names to the door, and the authorities simply collected them all. It demonstrates the rule to everyone watching: even if you use only the forms the system permits and ask only for what the system has promised, organising and signing your name is a serious crime.

The third account lies beyond the sentence. The eight years were served in full, and on the day of release he was beaten by four police officers outside the prison, then taken to a police substation to have "do not criticise the government" read aloud to him; after he got home, friends who tried to visit were turned away; and for seven or eight years after that, the surveillance arrived punctually by the calendar — Two Sessions, June Fourth. His own words, "out of the small prison into the big prison," are not rhetoric but an accurate description of the arrangement: for a man like He Depu the sentence was only the first instalment of the punishment, and the deprivation of political rights, the sensitive-date surveillance and the police knocks on his family's door are the second and third instalments, which appear in no judgment and carry no expiry date. Read against 1999 it is clearer still: the man who applied to spectate at someone else's trial was detained for eight hours; three years later, at his own sentencing, only his wife was allowed into the room — the line runs unbroken from the courthouse door to the prison gate to his own front door. This page keeps these three accounts because that is what an archive is for: read the judgment alone and this is one "inciting subversion" case; lay the dates, the signature list and the post-release calendar side by side, and you can see how the machine operated on one man for more than twenty years.

Verification Note

The evidence on this page is layered as follows. Layer one (primary judicial material, at one remove): the findings-of-fact passage of Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court Criminal Judgment (2003) Yi Zhong Xing Chu Zi No. 2933, quoted in full by Chinese Wikipedia and checked paragraph by paragraph for this page — the offices, the article titles and the quoted statements all come from that quotation; the original judgment document itself was not obtained, so this layer is strictly a "judgment as quoted" layer. Layer two (professional rights organisations): HRIC's 2011 release report (the eyewitness account of the release-day beating by four officers, the reading of the deprivation terms at the Zhanlan Road substation, his own account of the 85 days chained to a wooden bed and the holding-centre beating, his statement about his wife's and mother's humiliation, the hypertension and ear problems, the 2007 prison-conditions disclosure, the February 2008 medical-parole refusal, the substance and quotation of the Rogge letter, and the 1979/1989/Wang Dan/CDP biography), together with the titles and dates of HRIC's case updates of 27 September 2007, 3 March 2008 and 2 April 2008 as listed in HRIC's own link directory (full texts not obtained; used at title level only); OMCT's urgent appeals of 9 January and 12 March 2003 (the incommunicado period's start and end, the 30 January 2003 arrest papers, case officer Wang Yu, the family's notification on 6 March, the full text of the six demands); Human Rights Watch's Nipped in the Bud (the blocked spectatorship and eight-hour detention of 2 August 1999, the Zha–Gao sentences, the scale of the CDP crackdown); PEN International via IFEX (the 23 January release version; honorary membership of Swiss Romande PEN and the Independent Chinese PEN Centre); RSF via IFEX (arrest at his Beijing home on 4 November 2002, the seven jailed signatories, the 9 October 2004 visit, the hypertension and exercise limits, the compressed version of the six demands) and RSF's report of 3 March 2011 (release on 23 January and the release-day beating; its "two-hour trial on 6 November 2002" sentence contains a year error — see the conflict list); Amnesty International's document of 14 January 2003 (the list of seven); and the US State Department's 1999 Country Report (the pre-June-Fourth Beijing detention list). Layer three (organisational releases and news): the ICPC Secretariat briefing of 2 May 2018 and the ninth-congress briefing (the board election and the term's end); the ICPC tenth-anniversary release (the July 2011 Hong Kong speech); PEN America's release of 21 December 2007 (Jia Jianying warned at home) and its 2012 retrospective (Jia's account at the CECC hearing setting); Freedom House's China Media Bulletin No. 82 (the March 2013 surveillance, citing CHRD and RFA); and HRIC's compilation published by ICPC (the 24-hour surveillance of 20 May 2014). Layer four (secondary synthesis): Chinese Wikipedia (birthplace and the Christian identification, the chemical-factory and Academy career, the two candidacies, the Beijing–Tianjin branch leadership, the March 2000 dismissal, the 28 January 2003 criminal detention, the wife-only sentencing gallery, the 24 January release version and its clash details, the "small prison, big prison" quotation, the 2021 Twitter chain) and English Wikipedia (the 28 October 1956 birth date, Academy employment, and its two errors on the trial date and the job loss, addressed in the conflict list).

Conflict list (all carried in parallel, none merged): (1) Trial date and year. English Wikipedia gives "tried in a two-hour hearing on 14 October 2002" — logically impossible, since he had not yet been arrested on that date; this page determines the "2002" to be a year error and takes 14 October 2003 as the main hearing record, on the basis of the BBC Chinese report of 14 October 2003 cited by Chinese Wikipedia and the case's overall chronology. RSF's 2011 report gives eight years imposed "at the end of a sham two-hour trial on 6 November 2002" — the year likewise wrong, and hearing and sentencing merged. Chinese Wikipedia's sentence structure attaches the "two hours" to the sentencing of 6 November 2003. All three wordings are preserved; the main record is hearing on 14 October 2003, sentencing on 6 November 2003. (2) Release date. Three versions coexist: 23 January 2011 (PEN International's release; RSF's 2011 report), 24 January 2011 (English and Chinese Wikipedia), and 9 February 2011 (HRIC's release-day report as quoted inside PEN's release). The text says only "released on completion of sentence in late January 2011" and carries all three. (3) Place of the release-day beating. HRIC's same-day eyewitness version: beaten outside the prison after refusing to be shoved into a police vehicle, then taken to the Zhanlan Road substation. PEN America's relay of his wife's CECC-hearing account: beaten "the moment he arrived home." Both layers are carried; the eyewitness version is the main record. (4) His wife's name. "Jia Jianying" 贾建英 (OMCT, HRIC, PEN America, Chinese Wikipedia) against "Jia Jiangying" 贾江英 (RSF, 2004). The main text uses Jianying and flags the variant. (5) Job loss. Chinese Wikipedia: dismissed from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in March 2000, in the aftermath of the CDP crackdown. English Wikipedia: he "lost his job … after standing as a candidate in local elections in 1990," which does not fit the 1979 and 1998 candidacies recorded in the Chinese version; this page takes the Chinese version as its main record and archives the English wording as an error. (6) The formal-arrest news node. HRIC's directory dates its "formally arrested" item to 3 March 2003; OMCT records the family's notification on the evening of 6 March 2003; the two nodes are carried side by side without ranking. (7) A name in the signatory lists. Amnesty International's list writes "Sang Jianchen" 桑建臣； RSF writes "Sang Jiancheng" 桑建城 — two written forms of one fellow signatory's name, carried in parallel. (8) Term computation. A term expiring in late January 2011 broadly matches computation from the formal procedures of January 2003, but whether the paperwork-free detention of November 2002 to January 2003 was credited is not publicly recorded; this page raises the question and draws no conclusion. Unverified items (single source): his identification as a Christian (Chinese Wikipedia only); the May 2021 Twitter post (Chinese Wikipedia relaying his own account only); the number of family visits after the single visit recorded by RSF for 9 October 2004. Missing items (no public record): the full original text of the judgment; whether he appealed and any second-instance outcome; the name of the facility of his pre-trial detention; the number, names and ages of his children; his mother's name and circumstances; the full text of the April 2008 health update; how the Rogge letter was delivered; and his health and circumstances after September 2021.