Contact: Sharon Singh, [email protected], 202-675-8579, @AIUSAmedia
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Amnesty International has launched a new Chinese-language website containing research reports, articles, and blog entries on the organization’s research and activism around the world.
While the site is currently blocked by China’s state censors, it will be an important source of human rights information for Chinese speakers internationally.
“The importance of distributing more human rights information in the Chinese language reflects China's growing global influence,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s East Asia director, after the launch of the website. “This is a benchmark in the organization's ongoing efforts to engage Chinese-speaking human rights activists and supporters around the world.”
In the world’s most populous country, accessing information on human rights can be a challenging and sometimes even dangerous undertaking – activists who take to social media may be harassed, threatened, or even jailed by the authorities.
Amnesty International recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2011 and has been documenting human rights violations in China for nearly four decades.
The rights group’s recent work on China has included the detention of prominent photojournalist Du Bin, accounts of torture and other ill-treatment in China’s re-education through labor camps, and the harassment of human rights activists and their relatives – including family members of the dissident activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled to the U.S. in 2012.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists, and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth, and dignity are denied.