Zhao Chunhong (赵春红)
Zhao Chunhong (赵春红) is a rights defender from Pingquan City in Hebei Province, mainland China. Her years of petitioning grew out of a mining investment: she says a major shareholder seized her equity and that she could not get a fair resolution from the courts. In May 2023 she was detained in Beijing after visiting the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, and she was later sentenced to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (寻衅滋事罪).
Petitioning background
According to rights-defense reporting, Zhao invested in a mining venture and lost her equity when a major shareholder seized it; she petitioned for years over the court’s equity-distribution ruling. The reporting states that a court had agreed to enforce a 5-million-yuan award but that enforcement stalled after the court changed leadership.
The 2022 self-harm protest
On the night of January 6, 2022, during an interception operation in Beijing carried out by Beijing police together with local interception personnel, Zhao protested by drinking medicine in an act of self-harm. According to the report, this led to her uterus being removed.
Detention in May 2023
On May 12, 2023, Zhao went to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls to submit petition materials. The next day she told a friend on WeChat that Beijing police were watching her, and then she became unreachable. On May 14, the Pingquan City Public Security Bureau placed her under criminal detention on suspicion of 寻衅滋事罪 and sent her to the Chengde City Detention Center. On May 19 her family received an arrest notice from the Pingquan County Public Security Bureau.
Denied access to her lawyer, trial, and sentence
On May 27, 2023, Li Guobei, the lawyer appointed by Zhao’s family and law firm, went to the Chengde City Detention Center to meet her; the detention center refused the meeting, saying Zhao had violated detention-center rules. On the morning of July 17, 2024, her case — on charges of 寻衅滋事罪 and extortion (敲诈勒索罪) — was heard at the First Tribunal of the Longhua County People’s Court, with no verdict announced at the hearing. She was subsequently sentenced to four years for 寻衅滋事罪; her case record projects the term through May 13, 2027.
Current status
As of August 31, 2026, she was classified as in custody.
Notes on sources
The detention narrative is reported by the Rights Defense Network (May 18, 2023), and her identity, full case chronology and sentence are corroborated by the Chinese Human Rights Defenders prisoners-of-conscience database. The July 2024 hearing details and the lawyer-meeting denial are reported via the case record; the final judgment document has not been located. A different woman with the same name was detained in Beijing in March 2025 during the Two Sessions — she is not the same person and her case is not described here.