Four years ago, on 29 May 2015, veteran labour activist Liu Shaoming was detained in the southern city of Guangzhou. He was later sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment for “inciting subversion of state power.”His arrest was the first in a sustained crackdown on civil society labour activists that continues today with an estimated 50 activists currently in some form of detention.
Around 30 workers and activists, many of whom had worked with Liu in and around Guangzhou, were detained during a coordinated police action in December 2015. Most were released after a few days but the head of the Panyu Migrant Workers Centre, Zeng Feiyang and his colleagues Zhu Xiaomei and Meng Han were later tried and found guilty of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.” All three have now been released.
