Born in 1959, from Anxiang, Zhou Zhirong (周志荣) was a teacher at Xiangtan No. 2 Middle School, convicted of “counterrevolutionary propaganda and inflammatory delusion.”
Sentence history: the best available reconciliation is a two-stage sentence: 7 years at first instance in the Xiangtan Intermediate People’s Court, reduced to 5 years on appeal by the Hunan High Court, followed by parole in 1992. This account is graded PROBABLE because the appeal-and-parole sequence rests on the 2013 compendium; it reconciles the 7-year first-instance figure with the 5-year figure reported by HRIC and CHRD. Neither number should be presented alone as the complete sentence history.
HRIC identifies Zhou as born in 1959, from Anxiang, and a teacher at Xiangtan No. 2 Middle School, and records the 5-year figure. The Chinese Wikipedia Hunan article records the 7-year first-instance sentence. Quoted from the Wikipedia article: “湘潭市第二中学教师周志荣…被湘潭市中级人民法院以’反革命宣传煽动罪’判刑7年”.
Evidence status
The documentary record presently supports Zhou Zhirong’s identity, employment and conviction as stated above. The two-stage sentence and 1992 parole account is PROBABLE pending the original first-instance and appellate judgments. No complete release chronology is documented; anything not documented is marked RESEARCH PENDING.
Current status: unknown (no release record located).
Sources
- Human Rights in China, “An Independent Report on the Situation of the June 4 Massacre Victims”
- Chinese Human Rights Defenders, “The Legacy of Tiananmen: 20 Years of Oppression, Activism and Hope” (June 1, 2009)
- Song Yongyi, “A Guide to the ‘Court Cases of the June 4th Protesters Against Government Violence’” (Laogai Research Foundation)
- Chinese Wikipedia, 六四事件中的湖南省
- 2013 compendium, “六四屠殺24周年祭” (paolongtao, Google Groups), incorporating the 1994 HRIC/HRW-Asia Hunan roster
Source provenance: Where both HRIC and CHRD are cited, they draw on the same Jiang Qisheng / 1994 Hunan prisoner-list evidence lineage rather than two independent investigations.