Ye Haiyan
来自China Digital Space
叶海燕
Born on September 25, 1975, Ye Haiyan is a social worker and women's rights and gender rights activist. Also known as Hooligan Sparrow (流氓燕), Ye has since 2005 worked to raise awareness and campaign against the sexual abuse of children, and has advocated on behalf of sex workers and people living with HIV/AIDS. Her high-profile activism has resulted in significant official unease and attention, and she has reported attacks, threats, and pressure.
Born in a poor village in Wuhan, Hubei, Ye once ran a legitimate massage parlor nearby a similar establishment that was a front for a brothel. During this time, she befriended several prostitutes, and noticed the stigma that her employees held against them and their fear of contracting AIDS from chairs that they momentarily occupied. Later, while managing a karaoke club, she witnessed physical abuse against a sex worker. In 2003, after divorcing her husband, she and her daughter were offered a place to stay in the home of several sex workers, where she heard more horrific stories of their experiences.
In 2005, Ye began blogging about the plight of sex workers under the moniker "Hooligan Sparrow." Her website experienced frequent hacking attacks, and she was maligned as a pimp by web users. That year, she learned that a 23-year-old sex worker and contributor to her website had been murdered. In 2006, she established the China Women's Rights Workshop (中国民间女权工作室) in Wuhan, a rights association and community group. Her attempts to register her organization as an NGO failed due to a lack of government support, but her writing and advocacy earned her much financial backing from both low-income and high profile supporters, including internationally renowned artist and rights activist Ai Weiwei. By 2009, Ye had become one of China's leading critics of the criminalization of prostitution, but had won attention from police, and was frequently invited to tea.
Her high profile 2013 campaign against a Hainan elementary school principal accused of raping several female students attracted much global and official attention, and led to
Ye Haiyan at CDT
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