Ji Sizun (纪斯尊, 1949–2019) was a Fujian-based grassroots rights advocate known as a “barefoot lawyer,” a self-taught legal advocate who assisted petitioners and people affected by land seizures and forced evictions.
Advocacy and imprisonment
Ji was detained in 2008 after applying for a permit to demonstrate in one of Beijing’s official Olympics protest zones and was sentenced in 2009 to three years in prison. In October 2014, after publicly supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests and while traveling to Beijing for a land-issues conference, he was taken into custody. In 2016 he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on public-order charges.
Health deterioration and death
Human-rights reporting states that Ji’s health deteriorated in prison, including a stroke in 2018 and bowel surgery later that year. Requests for medical parole were denied. On April 26, 2019, after completing his sentence, he was transferred directly from Putian Prison to the intensive care unit of Xiangcheng District Hospital in Zhangzhou and remained under police guard.
Ji died on July 10, 2019. Reports describe internal bleeding shortly before his death, but no independent medical investigation established a definitive cause. Human-rights organizations called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of his hospitalization and death.