SENTINEL DEFENDERS BRIEFING Human rights developments through the lens of defender protection, justice and accountability. Issue #001 | 12 October 2026 Editor’s note This issue begins with developments affecting Hong Kong people: prosecutions concerning speech and disclosure, a court decision upholding an acquittal, and a change to settlement rules for BN(O) families in the United […]

Recent spyware warnings and phishing techniques highlight risks to human rights defenders, journalists and activists. Here are practical steps to reduce exposure.

For citizens of the People’s Republic of China, the constitutional right to stand for election promises representation. In practice, attempts to exercise this right can bring surveillance, harassment, detention, and exclusion from the ballot. In video games, an NPC is a “non-player character”: a figure who moves, speaks, and appears to act, but whose every […]

I n a Hong Kong courtroom this year, a political slogan popularized in the 1980s was effectively put on trial. Prosecutors argued that calling for an “end to one-party rule” did not merely criticize the Chinese Communist Party or a particular policy. In their view, it directly challenged the “fundamental system” established by the Constitution of […]

This official booklet combines the full text of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Traditional Chinese, May 2021 edition). It is provided as a reference text and the booklet itself does not have independent legal status, but the constitutional and Basic Law […]

Charter 08 is a Chinese citizens’ manifesto published in 2008 that calls for a democratic, constitutional, and human rights–based political system in China, inspired by Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77. Origin and context Charter 08 was drafted and signed by more than 300 Chinese intellectuals, lawyers, writers, and activists from both inside and outside the state system.  […]