Zhang Jianhong

Zhang Jianhong

"Cyber Dissident, Zhang Jianhong (pen name, Li Hong), a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, was sentenced in March 2007 to a six-year sentence for “incitement to subversion of state power.” Zhang is a well-respected writer in China, who contributed regularly to liberal-minded publications in China and to Chinese websites abroad. In August 2005, he founded the popular research and literary site “Aegean Sea” (www.Aiqinghai.org), which was shut down by authorities in March 2006. He is currently hospitalized for partial paralysis and is continuing to serve his sentence despite numerous motions for medical parole. In the early 1990s, Zhang served a year and a half in a re-education-through-labor camp for participating in the 1989 prodemocracy movement."

• Winner of the 2008 NED Democracy Award