Research status: Initial media record assembled; original 2002 arrest/trial files, UN records, complete 1989 source set, Citizen Power governance records, and durable copies remain open.
Yang Jianli is a Chinese democracy advocate and scholar whose public record includes participation in the 1989 movement, later democracy organizing abroad, and imprisonment in China from 2002 to 2007. Released on April 27, 2007, and permitted to return to the United States in August 2007, he is a former political prisoner now based in the United States, where he founded and leads Initiatives for China. After returning to China in 2002 to observe labor protests, he was detained and later sentenced to five years in prison. Human-rights and institutional sources document prolonged incommunicado detention, health concerns, international criticism of his imprisonment, and his later leadership of Citizen Power Initiatives for China. PRC state allegations in his case are retained as attributed official claims rather than independently adopted facts.
Selected source timeline
- 2002: Amnesty action on incommunicado detention.
- 2004: Washington Post sentence report; RFA and CECC case coverage.
- 2007: Released on April 27 (not permitted to leave China immediately); permitted to return to the United States in August (Journal of Democracy; Human Rights Foundation).
- 2008: RFA Mandarin interview.
- Official PRC-source allegations are archived separately as state-position evidence.