Shi Tao

Shi Tao (; born July 25, 1968) is a Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site. Yahoo! China was later discovered to have facilitated his arrest by providing his personal details to the Chinese government. Yahoo! was subsequently rebuked by a panel of the U.S. Congress, settled a lawsuit by Shi's family out of court, and pledged to reform its practices. Following Shi's arrest, he won two major international journalism awards: the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards and the Golden Pen of Freedom Award. On September 5, 2013, Shi Tao was released from prison. He received an 18-month reduction in sentencing after spending 8 and half years in prison. He lives in Yinchuan, Ningxia, with his mother. Background Shi Tao was born in Yanchi County, Wuzhong, Ningxia, in China in 1968. According to Liu Xiaobo, Shi became active in the democracy movement in 1989 around the time of the Tiananmen Square protests. In July 1991, he received a degree from Shanghai's East China Normal University. He married the following year. Prior to his arrest, Shi was an editor at Dangdai Shang Bao ("Contemporary Trade News"), a newspaper in Changsha, in Hunan Province.