Oscar push for documentary puts Chinese activist ‘Hooligan Sparrow’ in the spotlight

When Ye Haiyan held up a poster that declared “women’s rights are dead in China” on a beach on the southern island of Hainan more than three years ago, she had no idea the gesture would end up in a film among the Oscar finalists for best documentary.

The 80-minute Hooligan Sparrow – the title is Ye’s nickname – focuses on her and fellow activists’ efforts to get justice for six girls who were taken by their principal to a hotel in Hainan and raped in 2013. He was later jailed for 13½ years.

The film by director Nanfu Wang also documents the harassment that followed, including threats and violence towards Ye and her teenage daughter by police and thugs as the pair were forced from their rented homes in Guangxi and Guangdong.

“Although I was only being evicted and did not encounter physical violence as brutal as what other dissidents have experienced, the approaches used by security men were enough to shock the world: they trampled on the law, on human rights, and even produced fake evidence, fabricated rumours and publicly degraded me. Perhaps this is why the film was able to win so many awards,” Ye said in a statement published on Thursday, after the list of 15 finalists was announced on Wednesday. Ye, 41, first drew public attention in 2012 with a campaign for rights for the mainland’s sex workers.

Since then, she has been speaking up for women’s rights and remains an outspoken critic of the government, despite having been put under surveillance in her hometown of Wuhan and having her passport confiscated in 2014.