Originally from Yunnan Province, he founded the blog Not News with his girlfriend Li Tingyu where he documented 30,000 protests. The authorities made him a target of repression, and he spent four years in prison, where he was subjected to ill-treatment. Reda of Reporters Without Borders, which kept interest in his case alive.
Beijing (AsiaNews) – Lu Youyou, a Chinese journalist who has documented union protests against the government for years, has managed to reach Canada, as has his girlfriend Li Tingyu, who shares his activism. Lu Youyou remained in prison in China until 2020. In 2017, after about a year in prison, a court in Yunnan charged him with “stirring up unrest.” The trial began on June 23, 2017, and ended with him being sentenced to four years in prison. While in detention, he was denied medical care and interviews with his lawyer.
Lu Youyou and Li Tingyu founded the “Not News” blog in 2012, and for years have published information about tens of thousands of strikes and protests across China. They were arrested in 2016 in Dali, southern Yunnan Province; But while Li Tingyu was later released on bail, Lu Youyou was mistreated from the beginning, and his lawyers even filed a complaint of torture.
Lu had claimed that he could not sleep because of the bright lights in the detention center, but when he tried to cover his eyes with a blanket, prison guards prevented him from doing so and beat him. When the Chinese authorities prevented him from seeing a doctor, the citizen journalist began a hunger strike in protest.
Reporters Without Borders has long defended the journalist, calling for his immediate release and surrender to the communist regime in Beijing. “By denying Lu Youyou the medical care he needs, the Chinese authorities are trampling on their own criminal procedure code, which explicitly guarantees the medical rights of detainees in Article 265,” says Cédric Alviani, head of Reporters Without Borders’ East Asia bureau. In 2016, they were honored by the organization for their reporting work, which was primarily based on collecting information through online platforms.
Lu Youyou, a migrant worker from Guizhou Province, was briefly detained in June 2012 after participating in a public demonstration. The idea for the Not News blog was born specifically out of that experience. Chinese censors have often removed published data because the government deemed it “sensitive,” especially after the manufacturing sector was hit hard by the country’s economic slowdown. In 2015, nearly 30,000 demonstrations related to land confiscation and strikes were documented. Before their arrest, the authorities threatened Lu and Li on numerous occasions, even forcing them to change their addresses.
