Tan Li / 谭力 — Media Profile & Archive
This archive preserves the source record used for the canonical profile of the Changsha poet Tan Li and, critically, separates him from a different Hunan student with the same romanization.
Prisoner documentation
Chinese Human Rights Defenders, The Legacy of Tiananmen (2009), together with the HRIC/HRW-Asia Hunan prisoner-documentation lineage, records a five-year prison sentence for the Changsha poet. A later enriched compilation attributes counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement and places him at Chishan Prison; the detailed activity narrative remains source-attributed because the original judgment has not been located.
Identity safeguard
Human Rights Watch/Asia Watch, Anthems of Defeat (1992) documents a different “Tan Li”: a female Hunan Normal University foreign-languages student, about 20 in 1989, sentenced to one year in a separate poster case. Gender, occupation, sentence and prison context distinguish the two records. They must not be merged.
Open record gaps
The poet’s arrest date, court, original judgment, release record, later biography and present status remain unverified.