The parents of five Chinese feminists detained for more than a month have issued an 11th-hour plea to authorities for their release, as a lawyer for the activists said prosecutors have until today to charge them.
The young women face being charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” which could see them jailed for up to five years after they were detained by police early last month.
The vague charge of “provoking trouble” has been increasingly used by police under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to detain and jail protesters for holding small-scale demonstrations.
Photo: Reuters
The five women — Li Tingting (李婷婷), 25, Wei Tingting (韋婷婷), 26, Wang Man (王曼), 32, Zheng Churan (鄭楚然), 25, and Wu Rongrong (武嶸嶸), 30 — had in recent years been linked to several stunts aiming to highlight issues such as domestic violence and the poor provision of women’s toilets.
They were taken into custody a day ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8 as they were preparing to hand out leaflets about sexual harassment.
The activists are “young, kind-hearted and full of a sense of responsibility to society,” 10 of their parents and spouses wrote in a letter to Beijing prosecutors that was posted online on Saturday.
“These five girls, who we care for and love deeply, have not made a mistake, let alone committed a crime, they have all striven to uphold our nation’s basic policy of gender equality” they wrote. “Supporting gender equality and the interests of women is no crime.”
Their detention has prompted renewed condemnation of China’s tight controls on political activists from human rights groups, as well as the US.
Police questioning of the women — several of whom suffer from chronic health problems, such as asthma and an unspecified heart condition — have focused on a 2012 stunt named “Occupy Men’s Rooms,” one of their lawyers, Liang Xiaojun (梁小軍), said yesterday.
Prosecutors have until today to formally approve their arrest or police would be obliged to release the women, he added.
The parents said in their letter that the women “have been detained for over a month and we have not had a decent explanation.”
“Please restore their freedom and dignity as soon as possible,” they wrote.
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