Liu Dejun, 45, has spent his life fighting for human rights in China. As internet restrictions prevent people in China from accessing information outside the country, Liu has come up with a number of ways to help people within China access information freely – building underground networks that circumvent online censorship, and an app that enables users to learn how to organize nonviolent protests. In 2013, he fled China after being tortured in Chinese detention, and went into exile. He is now based in Nuremberg, Germany. 

Born in Suizhou, Hubei in 1976, he trained in a police academy before working as an officer in a prison and then as a manager in factories in Guangdong. There, he began advocating on behalf of workers and ran several blogs reporting on human rights violations in China, all of which were deleted by the authorities. He now runs a blog called “Free in China” from Germany. Later, he helped organize protests in Beijing on behalf of people whose homes were razed in massive state development projects. 

Liu’s work attracted the attention of the artist Ai Weiwei, who made a 2010 documentary featuring Liu called Hua Hao Yue Yuan (Blissful Harmony) about how the Chinese authorities treat activists. After the documentary’s release, he was among those calling for a “Jasmine Revolution”, inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings calling for democracy. He was arrested and tortured in Chinese detention. Upon his release he fled to Europe in 2013.  

I met him in Berlin, where we discussed his work as an overseas activist and his ongoing fight against intensifying censorship from Beijing.