{"id":48396,"date":"2015-07-28T00:08:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T00:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=48396 "},"modified":"2015-07-28T00:08:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T00:08:00","slug":"48396-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=48396","title":{"rendered":"Activist in Bid to Find Whereabouts of Detained Chinese Rights Lawyer Wang Yu"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>2015-07-27<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/30\/2015728image(18).jpg\" alt=\"2015728image(18).jpg (305&#215;219)\" \/><\/div><div>Beijing-based lawyer Wang Yu in an undated photo.<\/div><div>Photo courtesy of Wang Yu&#8217;s microblog<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>A Chinese lawyer has filed a formal information request to police in the northern city of Tianjin in a bid to find out the whereabouts of his lawyer, detained rights attorney Wang Yu, who has been held at an unknown location since the start of a nationwide crackdown on the legal profession.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Yu Wensheng filed the freedom of information request online on Saturday, calling on Tianjin police to reveal her location, and what crimes she is suspected of committing.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;Nobody knows what has happened to Wang Yu, and we only know that she was criminally detained through the media,&#8221; Yu told RFA. &#8220;Even her relatives and her defense attorneys don&#8217;t know.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;Wang Yu was also my defense attorney, and because I am currently out on bail, from a legal perspective, I have an interest in her case, and I also believe I have a duty to understand her whereabouts and the nature of the charges against her,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;That&#8217;s why I filed the freedom of information request with the police.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Since Wang&#8217;s detention amid a night-time raid on the Beijing-based Fengrui law firm on July 10, at least 255 lawyers, paralegals and legal support staff have been detained or questioned by Chinese police, the Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group said in a statement on its website.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Lawyers in undisclosed locations<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Of those, 230 have since been released, but 12 lawyers and three non-lawyers are still being held in undisclosed locations, including Wang Yu, her husband Bao Longjun, and Fengrui colleagues Wang Quanzhang, Huang Liqun and Zhou Shifeng, it said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>China&#8217;s tightly controlled state media has accused the Fengrui lawyers of &#8220;troublemaking&#8221; and seeking to incite mass incidents by publicizing cases where they defend some of the most vulnerable groups in society.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>According to Yu, the lack of information about Wang&#8217;s whereabouts contravenes China&#8217;s Criminal Procedure Law. &#8220;Such a large-scale detention of lawyers is also in breach of legal procedural regulations,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;I think they are trying to create a climate of fear for lawyers, so that some of them won&#8217;t dare to speak out, or may not take on human rights cases,&#8221; Yu said. &#8220;But I don&#8217;t think they will succeed in their aim.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Maybe some rights lawyers will be silenced, but even more will rise up in opposition, and still more will want to enter the profession of human rights lawyers,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Rights lawyer Chen Jiangang said that information on the whereabouts of detainees should be given to relatives and lawyers as a matter of course.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Nobody should have to apply for it,&#8221; Chen said. &#8220;The police should formally notify the families within a time period specified by law, but China&#8217;s police don&#8217;t abide by the law at all nowadays.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Every step they take is against the law now.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Fearless &#8216;warrior&#8217; Wang<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>An officer who answered the phone at the Tianjin police department declined to comment on the case.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;For freedom of information requests, you need to contact the complaints department, or you can call them and try,&#8221; the officer said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t really know about this.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group said Wang Yu is described by those who know her as a courageous and fearless &#8220;warrior.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/china-lawyer-07272015140807.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Yu Wensheng filed the freedom of information request online on Saturday, calling on Tianjin police to reveal her location, and what crimes she is suspected of committing.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}