Mao Shanchun (毛善春) — Media and Documentation Archive
This archive preserves the dated records for Mao Shanchun (毛善春), the Hubei human-rights defender sentenced to 4 years in 2025. Back to Person Profile
February 17, 2024 — 民生观察 (msguancha.com), “毛善春被带走羁押其父悲愤去世”: reports that 毛善春, a member of the Qin Yongmin China Human Rights Watch team from Gong’an County, Jingzhou, Hubei, was taken from his home village on January 31, 2024 (having returned from Wuhan on January 30) by state security officers, with no written legal notice given to his family; and that his father died on the evening of February 15, 2024 (per the report’s publication-date reading) after learning of the detention. Gives his biography: born into a village family in Gong’an County, joined the Party during 1993 military service in Shandong, 1995–1998 college study, village-committee service, 2003 resignation, rights-defense work from 2013, 2014 registration attempts, and a March 19, 2020 party-withdrawal declaration.
March 14, 2024 — Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) prisoner-of-conscience database record: 姓名 毛善春 / Name Mao Shanchun; male; born 1974-04-07; from Zhangzhuangpu township, Gong’an County, Jingzhou, Hubei; charge 寻衅滋事罪 (picking quarrels and provoking troubles); last taken 2024-01-31; sentence 4 years; term through 2028-01-30; transferred to the Shayang Fanjiatai Prison, Hubei. Records the detention timeline (criminal detention January 31, 2024; arrest approved March 7; prosecution review June 7; pre-trial conference August 13; trial August 28, 2024 at the Gong’an County People’s Court), the indictment’s allegations, the first-instance 4-year sentence (per a January 23, 2025 monitoring-organization report), and the April 2025 prison transfer.
August 31, 2026 — Rights Defense Network (维权网), Issue 131 monthly report: lists 毛善春 in the Chinese edition’s name index (between 毛丽旦·依拉吾冬（维） and 毛艳萍) and “Mao Shanchun” in the corresponding English position, placed in the 4-year sentence group — corroborates the roster identity and the sentence length.
August 2026 — FreeChina.live directory listing: “Mao Shanchun” appears in the mainland-China prisoner directory’s A–Z index — corroborates roster presence; no profile page existed at that time.
Source limitations
The msguancha report and the CHRD record were opened and read in full; the Issue 131 listings were verified during a prior research pass (roster-table records, not case reporting). The court judgment text is not publicly available; the 4-year sentence comes from a January 2025 monitoring-organization report as carried in the CHRD record, not from a court publication. No government or state-media reporting on this case was located. Family accounts of events (e.g., the circumstances of the father’s death) are reported as attributed to the cited sources, not as independently verified findings.
RFA item not read
The CHRD record also cites a February 19, 2024 Radio Free Asia (Mandarin) item. The page could not be opened in this research pass (the source domain could not be accessed) — it is recorded as not read and is flagged for the publisher to verify directly.