Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:42am EDT Related: WORLD, CHINA
 
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Human rights lawyer Wang Yu talks during an interview with Reuters in Beijing in this March 1, 2014 photo.
REUTERS/KIM KYUNG-HOON
 
 
China’s state media last month accused Wang Yu, the country’s most prominent female human rights lawyer, of “blabbering about the rule of law and human rights”.
 
Two weeks later, she met a Reuters reporter, saying she thought her arrest was inevitable.
 
Wang has defended Wu Gan, an online free speech advocate, Li Tingting, a prominent rights activist, and Cao Shunli, an activist who died in detention after being denied medical treatment.
 
In doing so, Wang became the focus of an unprecedented crackdown on human rights lawyers in China.
 
Although the government has not disclosed the reason for the crackdown, lawyers say the widespread support for Wang in the rights community appeared to be the catalyst.
 
State media said on Saturday police had criminally detained Wang and some colleagues. Four lawyers taken in for questioning said police had warned them not to advocate for Wang, according to accounts by them and other activists.
 
The rights group Amnesty International said 101 lawyers and activists, including Wang, were targeted by police in a nationwide sweep.
 
Police have said Fengrui Law Firm, the firm that Wang works for, is a “major criminal organization” that served as a coordinating “platform” involved in dozens of sensitive cases since 2012, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said on Saturday.
 
Nine of Wang’s colleagues had been detained, according to Amnesty.
 
The Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
 
PRESSING FOR RULE OF LAW
 
China has consistently cracked down on rights lawyers but the current campaign was unprecedented both in terms of numbers and the way it has been carried out, said Eva Pils, a China law expert at King’s College London.
 
“Previously, it was much more covered, it was much less open, and the reason why people are saying this is a bit ‘Cultural Revolution-style’ is because it’s so public,” Pils said, referring to a 1966-1976 campaign that convulsed the country in chaos and violence after then leader Mao Zedong declared class war.