Evidence status: Documented profile with an unresolved term-length conflict. Current status is unknown.
Deng Liming / 邓立明 was a worker in Shaoyang City, Hunan. Human Rights Watch/Asia Watch reported that he was 29 in 1989 and participated in the 1989 Democracy Movement in Shaoyang.
Human Rights Watch reported authorities’ allegations that Deng disseminated “reactionary speech,” posted big-character posters and stirred people to “wreck.” These phrases are official characterizations quoted by the human-rights report, not adjudicated findings.
According to Human Rights Watch, Deng was arrested in July 1989 and in December 1989 the Shaoyang City Public Security Bureau imposed three years of reeducation through labor. This was administrative detention, not a criminal-court sentence.
Unresolved term conflict
The term is disputed. Human Rights Watch’s detailed 1992 entry says three years. CHRD’s 2009 Hunan list and a 2013 informant-attributed Hunan compilation report two years. The original Public Security Bureau reeducation-through-labor decision has not been located. The three-year figure is better supported by the detailed contemporary HRW account, but the conflict remains unresolved and both figures must be retained.
The 2013 compilation also places Deng in a Xinkaipu reeducation-through-labor roster. That facility attribution is single-source and remains qualified.
Current status
No reliable release record or post-detention history has been established. A nominal term must not be converted into a release fact. Current status: unknown.
Sources
Human Rights Watch/Asia Watch, Anthems of Defeat: Crackdown in Hunan Province, 1989–92 (May 1992), Appendix I-D. Chinese Human Rights Defenders, The Legacy of Tiananmen (2009), Hunan appendix. 2013 Hunan prisoner compilation, used as an informant-attributed secondary source.