The People's Republic of the Disappeared

On November 21, human rights defender Jiang Tianyong disappeared. He was supposed to arrive in Beijing at 6:30 am the following day but when his train pulled into the station he was not onboard. Attempting to file a missing person report at their local police station in Zhengzhou, his family was toldto go to Beijing for answers. At the time of writing, Jiang’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Jiang is just the latest victim in Beijing’s terror campaign against the human rights community, which has seen the disappearance of countless individuals into a shadowy network of secret detention. Over the last decade, China has worked to normalize enforced disappearances behind a veneer of the rule of law. Read more