Robin Munro (1 June 1952 – 19 May 2021) was a British legal scholar, author, human rights advocate, and witness of the 1989 democracy movement in China. Munro enrolled in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh and left for China in 1977, as among the first foreign students allowed to study in the country after the reopening of universities following the Cultural Revolution. Upon returning to London in 1979, he joined Amnesty International as their China researcher. In 1987, Munro moved to New York to join Human Rights Watch, and from 1989 to 1998, he served as the principal China researcher and Director of HRW’s Hong Kong office, during which he witnessed first-hand the Tiananmen Square protests.
Munro returned to London in 1999 to pursue a doctoral degree at SOAS University of London, where he continued to research psychiatric abuse in China, and earned his PhD in 2005. In 2003, Munro returned to Hong Kong and joined as the Research Director of the China Labour Bulletin, founded by Han Dongfang, one of the Tiananmen leaders Munro helped escape. Munro retired in 2011, moving to Taiwan after being diagnosed with cancer and died of complications from illness on 19 May 2021.
Munro wrote extensively about the human rights situation in China and co-authored Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement, which traced the lives of three leading Tiananmen activists to explain the genesis of pro-democracy movements.
Munro returned to London in 1999 to pursue a doctoral degree at SOAS University of London, where he continued to research psychiatric abuse in China, and earned his PhD in 2005. In 2003, Munro returned to Hong Kong and joined as the Research Director of the China Labour Bulletin, founded by Han Dongfang, one of the Tiananmen leaders Munro helped escape. Munro retired in 2011, moving to Taiwan after being diagnosed with cancer and died of complications from illness on 19 May 2021.
Munro wrote extensively about the human rights situation in China and co-authored Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement, which traced the lives of three leading Tiananmen activists to explain the genesis of pro-democracy movements.
