2015-10-09
Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Yu poses during an interview in Hong Kong, March 20, 2014.
AFP
Authorities in Myanmar have detained the teenage son of detained Chinese rights lawyer Wang Yu in a murky cross-border operation after he was denied permission to leave the country legally, a rights website and a Chinese lawyer said on Friday.
Bao Zhuoxuan, also known by his nickname Bao Mengmeng, was taken away from the Huadu Guesthouse in the border town of Mongla by Burmese police on Tuesday, the China Change website reported.
Two adult males, Tang Zhishun and Xing Qingxian were detained at the same time. The trio had crossed the border as tourists during the National Day holidays last week, it said.
It quoted the guesthouse owner as saying that the police had shown Burmese IDs, but local police later denied having detained anyone.
Bao Mengmeng was initially held at an unknown location following the detention of his parents, Bao Longjun and Wang Yu, which kicked off a nationwide police operation that has detained or questioned at least 288 lawyers and their associates since the night of July 9-10.
Bao, who had planned to attend college in Australia, was later told he couldn’t leave China because his departure would “harm state security,” and police confiscated his passport.
A number of rights lawyers have also been stopped by border guards from leaving China since.
Wang’s colleague and supporter Yu Wensheng confirmed the report, but said he was having a hard time confirming exactly what had happened.
“It’s likely that [Bao] is already in the hands of the Chinese police,” Yu told RFA on Friday.
But he added: “The details of the situation aren’t clear at the moment, because I only learned about this today. I am still not sure whether they were detained by Myanmar police or by Chinese police who had crossed the border.”
He said Bao’s whereabouts are still unknown, however, and that he had heard that the case is being handled by the state security police from China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia.
No case file in Mongla
Mongla is in a military zone controlled by former Chinese citizen Lin Xianming and his son Lin Daode of the 815 Army, but China’s currency, the yuan, circulates freely there, and there are close economic ties, as well as cross-border postal services.
Local residents are mostly ethnic Han Chinese, and the official language is Mandarin. The region has regular transport links across the border and shares a telephone code with China’s Xishuangbanna region, whose police officers have the ability to cross the border easily.
An officer who answered the phone at the Mongla police bureau, however, declined to confirm who had detained Bao.
“Are you absolutely sure it was us who detained him?” the officer said. “If we had, there would be a case file set up here. We wouldn’t have been able to detain him without a case file.”
“I don’t really know what’s going on.”
Asked if Myanmar police had acted on a request from Chinese police, he said it was unlikely.
“We don’t just take orders from the Chinese side … just like that,”
he said. “I think you should ask our leaders if you want to get answers to this question.”
An officer who answered the phone at the Xishuangbanna police bureau in China said its officers have carried out cross-border arrests in the past.
“Sometimes we go [there] if it’s necessary,” the officer said. But he declined to comment on the detention of Bao.
“How would I know about that? There’s no point in talking to me about this stuff,” he said.
According to China Change, Bao’s friends have reported the three detainees missing with local police, but say the guesthouse owner is refusing to discuss the case following a second visit from local police.
Wang Yu is being held under “residential surveillance” at an unknown location on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” as well as the more serious “incitement to subvert state power,” her lawyers have said.
But repeated requests from Wang’s and Bao Longjun’s lawyers for a meeting with their clients have been turned down by the authorities.
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