Li Tingyu, Freelance
Medium:Internet
Charge:Retaliatory
Imprisoned:June 15, 2016

Police in Dali, Yunnan province, detained Li Tingyu and Lu Yuyu, who are a couple, on June 15 2016, according to Radio Free Asia.

Since early 2013, Li had helped Lu to research and publish reports on protests. The pair worked together until their arrest, according to The Initium, a Hong Kong-based news website.

Since October 2012, Lu had been collecting information about protests -- including those against land expropriation, wage arrears, official corruption, and environmental pollution -- on Chinese social media platforms, often posted by participants and witnesses who wanted to attract wider public attention. After verifying the photos, videos, and text, Lu would publish reports on the protests on his social media accounts, accompanied by photos and video clips collected from participants and witnesses. As well as reporting daily on protests, Lu periodically published statistical reports on the protests, he explained in a 2014 interview with Foreign Policy. [The author of the article now works at CPJ.]

Li, originally from Foshan, Guangdong province, had been repeatedly harassed by police when she was a student at Sun Yat-sen University for publishing articles criticizing the Chinese government on websites blocked by China's Internet censorship system. She dropped out of the university in 2014 as a result, according to Radio Free Asia and Wen Yunchao, a New York-based blogger and friend of Lu.

In August, Lu's lawyer, Wang Zongyue, posted on social media that when he visited Lu, the journalist told him prison officials had beaten him after he covered his eyes while trying to sleep under the bright lights in his cell. Lu said the guards had twisted his arms, choked him, and that he had hit his head on a wall as a result. After prison officials refused Lu's request to see a doctor, he went on hunger strike to protest his mistreatment, according to Wang's social media posts.

Police detained Lu for 10 days in April 2012 for participating in a protest demanding the disclosure of official assets. Li, originally from Foshan, Guangdong province, had been repeatedly harassed by police when she was a student at Sun Yat-sen University for publishing articles criticizing the Chinese government on websites blocked by China's Internet censorship system.

Lu and Li are being held at the Dali Detention Center, Li's lawyer, Huang Simin, told CPJ.

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