{"id":57670,"date":"2016-07-12T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T12:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=57670 "},"modified":"2016-07-12T12:47:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T12:47:00","slug":"57670-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=57670","title":{"rendered":"In China, Relatives Await Word on Detained Rights Lawyers After a Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 11, 2016<\/span><\/p>

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The wives of human rights lawyers who were detained a year ago wore dresses with their husbands\u2019 names to the state prosecutor\u2019s offices in Beijing on Monday.<\/span><\/p>

Greg Baker\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/p>

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BEIJING \u2014 You Minglei, a legal assistant to a human rights lawyer in Fuzhou, in southern China, was waiting on Friday for his wife, Zhao Wei, to come home. The police had released Ms. Zhao on bail on Thursday after nearly a year in jail and just two days before the anniversary of mass detentions of rights lawyers and activists in China that have drawn criticism from around the world and that are known as \u201c709\u201d for July 9, the day it began last year.<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>I\u2019m happy,\u201d Mr. You said by telephone.<\/span><\/p>

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Yet he had no idea when Ms. Zhao, 24, also a legal assistant, would return home. Nor did Ms. Zhao\u2019s two lawyers. None of the three men had heard from the police in the eastern city of Tianjin who had charged her with state subversion. None were allowed to see her during the year she was in jail, and they did not know why she was released.<\/span><\/p>

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Messages appeared on Ms. Zhao\u2019s Weibo social media account starting on Thursday, saying that she was out of jail and well, but not where she was.<\/span><\/p>

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The police in Tianjin said she had been released after she admitted her crimes and showed a good attitude.<\/span><\/p>

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Unlike Mr. You, dozens of relatives of the lawyers and others caught up in the sweep that has spread fear and defiance through China\u2019s embattled legal rights community are still waiting for their loved ones\u2019 release. It has been a year since the police began detaining about 250 lawyers, legal activists and human rights activists.<\/span><\/p>

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Most were released after questioning, but the Public Security Bureau has formally arrested 17, Amnesty International said, many on the serious charges of state subversion or inciting state subversion. The Chinese authorities said last year that the rights lawyers were spreading \u201csocial chaos\u201d through their litigation.<\/span><\/p>

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The Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group, set up in 2013 to support detained rights lawyers, listed 23 on Friday who were in detention, some incommunicado.<\/span><\/p>

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Legal groups in China and overseas, as well as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, have sharply criticized the detentions.<\/span><\/p>

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On Saturday, bar associations, lawyers and law professors around the world published open letters to China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, protesting the lawyers\u2019 treatment and calling for their release.<\/span><\/p>

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Because of the state\u2019s \u201cunprecedented attack on human rights practice,\u201d being a lawyer in China is \u201ca dangerous occupation,\u201d the London-based International Bar Association\u2019s Human Rights Institute said in one letter. Another, signed by 14 bar associations and professional groups and dozens of individual lawyers, called the grounds for the lawyers\u2019 detentions \u201cabsent, weak or arbitrary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

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In the United States, the American Bar Association announced that one of the jailed lawyers, Wang Yu, would receive the organization\u2019s first International Human Rights Award.<\/span><\/p>

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This week, the relatives of those still behind bars spoke out \u2014 and acted out \u2014 in protest.<\/span><\/p>

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On Monday, several women, including Wang Qiaoling, the wife of one of the imprisoned lawyers, donned dresses on which they had written the names of their jailed husbands and walked to the offices of the state prosecutor in Beijing, where they tried to hand over a formal complaint about the detentions and charges.<\/span><\/p>

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The police allowed them into the building but refused their complaint, according to a European diplomat who was present. Several foreign diplomats were on hand, signaling the concern that some overseas governments have over the crackdown. To mark the anniversary, a State Department spokesman, John Kirby, said that the United States was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d about the detentions and urged China to release the lawyers and activists immediately.<\/span><\/p>

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On Saturday, they traveled to the detention center in Tianjin where their husbands are being held and recorded video messages of love and support outside. Security agents watched and followed them, they said.<\/span><\/p>

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In an interview on Friday as she prepared to travel to Tianjin, Ms. Wang, who is married to Li Heping, who was Ms. Zhao\u2019s boss, said that adversity had made her strong and that the hardest times were behind her family.<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>For a year, the authorities have not let us move home, nor let our children go to school,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>

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She added: \u201cWe\u2019ve been called to the police station and been frightened; we are not allowed to get lawyers for ourselves, publish or do interviews with foreign media.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>Because my husband is the main breadwinner in the family, this year we fell into dangerous financial times,\u201d she continued.<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>In the very beginning, it was painful and really hard to manage things, but the hardest days are over,\u201d she said. \u201cNow we\u2019re out of it, and we\u2019re facing daily life and reality with optimism, and continuing to protest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

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In a statement issued this week, the Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group warned that China had become a \u201cpermanent\u201d repressive state.<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>We are witnessing a transition from spasmodic suppression to a permanent high-pressure state,\u201d read the statement, published in English on the website of China Change, a group based overseas. Chang Boyang, a member of the Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group, vouched for the statement\u2019s authenticity.<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>There is no factual basis for the charges against Zhao Wei or Li Heping,\u201d Mr. Chang said. \u201cIt\u2019s an act of political repression and doesn\u2019t conform to the law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

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Late Friday, Mr. You was still waiting for his wife to come home.<\/span><\/p>

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Even after she does, \u201cshe\u2019s not free yet,\u201d he said, because her release on Thursday is conditional for one year.<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>If you do something they\u2019re not satisfied with, you may have to go in again,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>

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Mr. You added that an open letter on Ms. Zhao\u2019s Weibo account, said to be written by his wife, that accused her boss, Mr. Li, of exploiting her by asking her to \u201cput out information on my personal Weibo, influencing public opinion\u201d and of accepting foreign funding for his work, was unlikely to have reflected her true thoughts.<\/span><\/p>

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In comments online, some readers compared the letter to forced confessions on state television, which have occurred in similar recent cases.<\/span><\/p>

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The reasons for Ms. Zhao\u2019s release were not clear, but the police in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, said on their official Weibo account on Friday that they had criminally detained one of her lawyers, Ren Quanniu, for saying that his client had suffered \u201cphysical insults\u201d while in detention, causing an \u201codious social impact\u201d and harming Ms. Zhao\u2019s reputation.<\/span><\/p>

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In earlier interviews, Mr. Ren said he believed Ms. Zhao\u2019s release, long rumored, came because she had been sexually assaulted in detention. Others, including Mr. Ren and her other lawyer, Yan Huafeng, said another reason was that her case was too flimsy to be prosecuted.<\/span><\/p>

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For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>Yet he had no idea when Ms. Zhao, 24, also a legal assistant, would return home. Nor did Ms. Zhao&#8217;s two lawyers. None of the three men had heard from the police in the eastern city of Tianjin who had charged her with state subversion. None were allowed to see her during the year she was in jail, and they did not know why she was released.<\/div><\/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-57670","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\/57670","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=57670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}