Identification method
The roster’s English edition lists “Yang Kui” with no Chinese characters. The Chinese edition of the same report was read directly: its 判刑 4 年 6 个月，72 人 (sentenced to 4 years 6 months, 72 people) list reads “…周松林、席照军、杨奎、张文鹏、栾庆玲、田仙言、李春华…”, while the English edition lists “…Zhou Songlin, Xi Zhaojun, Yang Kui, Zhang Wenpeng, Luan Qingling, Tian Xianyan, Li Chunhua…” — the same neighbor sequence in both languages, with 杨奎 occupying the “Yang Kui” position, verified by direct reading on October 9, 2026 (live readback confirmed the same sequence on the live Chinese edition). The report’s own name index （八、本期中国大陆1638名在押政治犯、良心犯名单索引） independently places 杨奎 in the Y block — …杨俊成、杨奎、杨兰英、杨立才… — matching the English index’s “…Yang Juncheng, Yang Kui, Yang Lanying, Yang Licai…” adjacency. This positional identification, from the report’s own two editions, is the sole basis for the Chinese characters — no independent biographical source confirms them. The adjacent-index names 杨俊成 and 杨兰英 are different roster entries in different custody classes, not this person.
Source chronology
- August 31, 2026 — Rights Defense Network / 维权网， Issue 131 monthly report, “中国大陆在押政治犯、良心犯月度报告（第131期，共1638人）” (Chinese and English editions). The report’s sentence-statistics table （七、本期中国大陆1638名在押政治犯、良心犯刑期统计表） lists a 72-person group sentenced to 4 years 6 months; the Chinese edition’s list places 杨奎 between 席照军 and 张文鹏， positionally matching “Yang Kui” in the English edition. The report classifies its entries as political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in custody (dated source claim). No individual case detail is given for this entry. No biography appears in the report’s narrative sections (the report omits biographies for entries with no new information this month).
- October 2026 (research). Bounded searches for 杨奎 and “Yang Kui” across rights-defense reporting, news archives, and prisoner databases returned no indexed reporting on this person. Nexis corpus (~/workspace/freechina-nexis/): no hits. Identity registry: no hits. No prior evidence packet exists for this name. Because “Yang Kui” is a common name, wrong-person candidates were explicitly excluded (see identity notes): the Taiwanese writer 楊逵 (1906–1985), Hong Kong activist 杨匡， a 2006 journalist extortion-case defendant, and other unrelated Yang cases — none attached to this record.
Media records
No news, advocacy, or documentary media records on this person were located beyond the Issue 131 roster listing itself. The single source is the roster; there are no media items to chronicle. This section exists so the archive is honest about that: one source, read directly, with nothing else found.
Conflicts and limitations
- The roster is a monitoring-organization compilation, not a court record; a listing is not independently verified custody.
- “Yang Kui” is a common name; the identification rests on the report’s own positional alignment, not on independent biographical corroboration. Do not attach outside reporting under this name without identity verification.
- Present custody status is unknown: the report records a sentence, not a current location, sentence start date, or release date.
- The CHRD Prisoners of Conscience database (tenchu.org/pocd/public/), which the report notes as containing its roster entries, could not be queried programmatically (search form requires an interactive session; CSRF-protected POST, keyword GET param not honored). Any record there remains unretrieved.
Archived person: 杨奎 (Yang Kui) — Person Profile
Related: 杨奎 (Yang Kui) — Person Profile