Cui Bin （崔斌）, born April 17, 1964, is a disabled rights-defense citizen （维权访民） from Shuanghekou, Wanzhou District, Chongqing, who lived in the Wanquan low-rent housing community. According to case records compiled by the monitoring organization China Political Prisoner Concern (CPPC, case file 01003) and the CHRD prisoner database, Cui twice acted to save people attempting suicide — in 2005 while working in Shanghai, where newspaper coverage at the time praised him as a model citizen, and again on February 29, 2012, when he joined Wanzhou firefighters in rescuing a woman. During the 2012 rescue his knee was stepped on by an armed-police officer, leaving him with a second-degree disability. His repeated applications for government aid and the statutory awards he believed he was owed were refused, and he began petitioning for his rights — a path that, according to CPPC, brought repeated harassment: deleted posts and account bans, residential surveillance, detention, and beatings. From 2015 to 2018 he petitioned in Beijing on crutches, joined vigils around the case of the rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, marched with a placard, and photographed himself in a shirt reading “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny.” CPPC reports he was beaten by unidentified assailants during this period, including an attack that severed eight tendons and three finger bones, and that he was subjected to the “electric chair” torture during interrogation.
On April 28, 2020, Cui suddenly lost contact. According to CPPC and CHRD, he had clashed with stability-maintenance personnel who had come to control him, and in the confrontation he killed one of them; CPPC describes the killing as self-defense. He was immediately detained by Wanzhou police and then arrested on suspicion of intentional homicide （故意杀人罪）, and was held at the Wanzhou Detention Center in Chongqing. On April 8, 2021, the Wanzhou District Court in Chongqing sentenced him to death with a two-year reprieve （死刑缓期二年执行） for intentional homicide, according to CPPC, CHRD, and a Radio Free Asia report. CPPC and CHRD report that the court had originally leaned toward life imprisonment but imposed the heavier sentence after judging his attitude of remorse inadequate; RFA independently reported, citing fellow petitioner Li Yunsheng, that the court was dissatisfied with Cui’s plea attitude and that a life sentence had initially been expected.
Note on conflicting accounts: RFA’s report also carries a different version of the killing — citing an officer involved in the investigation, it describes Cui going to the other man’s home and stabbing him, and quotes the officer calling Cui “both pitiable and hateful.” CPPC, by contrast, frames the killing as self-defense against hired thugs and notes that “Minsheng Guancha” （民生观察） reported Cui had been under years of surveillance and violence, with threats on his life. The original reporting for the Minsheng Guancha account could not be located; it is known only through RFA’s citation. This page reports each account with its source and does not resolve the conflict.
Cui’s facility is reported inconsistently: the CHRD record’s location column names Chongqing Yudu Prison （重庆渝都监狱， Changshengqiao, Nan’an District, postal code 401336), while both the CHRD biographical note and CPPC state he was serving his sentence at Chongqing Shudu Prison （重庆蜀都监狱）. The discrepancy is unresolved.
On the sentence’s aftermath, the record is limited to what sources state. The two-year reprieve period ran from the April 2021 sentencing. No source found states that the sentence was carried out, commuted, or otherwise resolved, and no official finding on his current status has been located. A comment posted on CPPC’s own case page on February 17, 2026 describes Cui as still in custody （在押） — that is the latest dated statement found, and it is a monitoring-organization blog comment, not an official or independently verified finding. Nothing in the sources supports any claim about execution, commutation, or his present circumstances, and none is made here.
Sources: CPPC case file 崔斌（CPPC编号：01003), published April 21, 2021; Radio Free Asia, “重庆残疾维权人士崔斌卷入维稳人员命案被判死缓,” April 12, 2021; CHRD prisoner database record for 崔斌 (entry dated 2021-04-19). See the Media Profile & Archive for full source detail, per-item verification, and evidentiary limits.
View the Cui Bin （崔斌） Media Profile & Archive for the complete source record and provenance.