Person profile: Tao Hong (陶红)
Media Profile & Archive — Tao Hong (陶红)
This archive preserves the case record behind the Tao Hong (陶红) profile: a rights activist from Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu, who disappeared on September 9, 2022 after her last public social-media post and has since been reported held in a makeshift detention arrangement without a formal sentence. All details below are as reported by the cited sources.
Case record (as reported)
- Background — Tao Hong’s home in Zhangjiagang was forcibly demolished and her property burned more than ten years ago. She spent over a decade petitioning, was repeatedly detained by local authorities, and lived under long-term surveillance and restrictions on her movement.
- Advocacy — She spoke out for victims of unlawful confinement, including the “chained woman” cases, and after the March 2022 death by fire of rights activist Mao Lihui, she contacted friends to help investigate and gave media interviews questioning the official account.
- September 9, 2022 — Tao Hong’s last social-media post, stating she would never take her own life. She then lost all contact and was reported forcibly disappeared.
- April 2023 — A rights-monitoring report noted she had been missing for nearly eight months with no word.
- Confinement (as reported in the case record) — Seized by local police in Beijing on September 9, 2022; six months of residential surveillance at a designated location in a demolition-resettlement building; then successive one-year bail periods from the police and the procuratorate — about two years and eight months in total — confined to a small room with round-the-clock rotating guards, no television or communications, personal devices confiscated, and no contact with her husband or others.
- April 28, 2025 — With the procuratorate’s bail expiring, a prosecutor reportedly announced a non-prosecution decision for insufficient evidence on a public-order charge. She was reportedly still not freed; guards were increased and her confiscated belongings were not returned.
Charges: no formal sentence was ever recorded. The procuratorate’s 2025 decision declined prosecution on the public-order allegation.
Current status: not confirmed by available sources after April 2025.
Sources preserved
- Weiquanwang (维权网) (April 5, 2023): “江苏张家港市维权人士陶红女士遭强迫失踪近8个月仍音信全无” — original article. Chinese-language rights-monitoring outlet. Establishes the identity (Zhangjiagang activist), the demolition/petition background, chained-woman advocacy, Mao Lihui involvement, the September 9, 2022 disappearance, and the eight-month silence. (Characterizations such as “forcibly disappeared” are the source’s own.)
- Quanli Yundong (权利运动 / chinahrc.org) (April 5, 2023): republication of the Weiquanwang report — syndicated copy. Recorded for provenance; not a second independent source.
- CHRD Political Prisoner Database (case record entered May 3, 2023): case-record anchor — identity, disappearance date, confinement details, and the April 2025 non-prosecution update. The confinement timeline and the 2025 decision rest on this case record alone; no second source was found. Record held in the PoC database (established human-rights monitoring organization).
See also
Person profile: Tao Hong (陶红)