A leading Chinese rights lawyer suddenly freed from detention may escape prosecution if he pays a fine for tax evasion allegedly committed by the group he co-founded, his attorney said yesterday.
Although Xu Zhiyong (許志勇) was allowed to walk out of a Beijing detention center on Sunday after being locked up since late last month, authorities have not abandoned the accusations of tax evasion that led to his detention.
“If Xu pays the fine for tax evasion, it’s likely that he will not face prosecution,” said Zhou Ze (周澤), Xu’s lawyer. “I believe he won’t be in other kinds of trouble.”
Chinese tax authorities levied a 1.42 million yuan (US$208,000) fine last month on the legal organization Gongmeng (公盟), which Xu helped found.
Xu himself said that while authorities probed the case, he would be allowed to leave Beijing, but would have to get permission first.
“I must be willing to help the judicial authorities as they investigate the case,” Xu said, adding that his colleague Zhuang Lu (庄璐) was also released on Sunday.
China has also freed Ilham Tohti, an Internet activist and a member of the ethnic Uighur minority concentrated in the northwestern Xinjiang region, which was rattled by deadly unrest last month, an official said.
“Ilham has returned home. It happened two days ago,” said an official at the Minzu University of China, where Tohti works as a professor of economics.
Earlier reports has said Tohti was detained after the Xinjiang government said he had helped instigate last month’s unrest by spreading rumors on his Web site, but the university official said “others” had posted the offending content on the site, prompting Tohti’s relatives and the school to request bail.
“He’s now assisting police with their investigations,” the official said.
Some rights advocates have seen the recent detentions as a reflection of a tougher attitude from Beijing toward non-mainstream voices in a year full of highly sensitive anniversaries.
June saw the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy protests, while China will on Oct. 1 mark 60 years since the founding of the communist state.
Gongmeng, whose English name is the Open Constitution Initiative, is an association of lawyers and academics who advocate the rule of law.
Its lawyers have also established a reputation for taking on high-profile compensation cases, including cases linked to the tainted-milk scandal that shook the nation last year.
After the fine, Beijing police raided a Gongmeng research unit, while the organization itself has been closed down by officials who said it was an unregistered “illegal” entity.
Xu’s release came a day after Jon Huntsman, the newly appointed US ambassador to China, announced that US President Barack Obama would visit Beijing in November.
“Xu’s release is a victory for all those who seek to promote the public interest and it’s a huge step of progress for promoting the rule of law in the country,” said Zhou Xiaozheng (周小征), a law professor at Beijing’s Renmin University, the Global Times newspaper reported.
Rainfall is expected to become more widespread and persistent across central and southern Taiwan over the next few days, with the effects of the weather patterns becoming most prominent between last night and tomorrow, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said that based on the latest forecast models of the combination of a low-pressure system and southwesterly winds, rainfall and flooding are expected to continue in central and southern Taiwan from today to Sunday. The CWA also warned of flash floods, thunder and lightning, and strong gusts in these areas, as well as landslides and fallen
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
SOUTH CHINA SEA? The Philippine president spoke of adding more classrooms and power plants, while skipping tensions with China over disputed areas Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday blasted “useless and crumbling” flood control projects in a state of the nation address that focused on domestic issues after a months-long feud with his vice president. Addressing a joint session of congress after days of rain that left at least 31 dead, Marcos repeated his recent warning that the nation faced a climate change-driven “new normal,” while pledging to investigate publicly funded projects that had failed. “Let’s not pretend, the people know that these projects can breed corruption. Kickbacks ... for the boys,” he said, citing houses that were “swept away” by the floods. “Someone has
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
RSS