A well-known Chinese human rights lawyer and her husband, a trainee lawyer, have been arrested on charges of political subversion, her lawyer said on Wednesday.
The arrest of the couple followed the disclosure this week of formal charges for a number of legal workers who have challenged the grip of state power on citizens’ lives.
The lawyer, Wang Yu (王宇), was formally arrested on suspicion of “subversion of state power,” a charge usually applied against dissidents accused of organizing political challenges to Chinese Communist Party rule.
Photo: Reuters
Wang’s husband, Bao Longjun (包龍軍), who worked with her, was charged with “inciting subversion of state power,” a slightly lighter charge also used to imprison dissidents.
“Subversion of state power is serious,” said Li Xianhan (李顯函), a lawyer representing Wang. “It could attract a life sentence.”
Li said that she was told of the couple’s formal arrest by their family members, who received notices by mail that arrived on Wednesday. The charges come approximately six months after the couple’s detention.
Wang “most probably also knows that she has been charged; they would have shown her the arrest notice,” Li added. “But I have not been able to see her, so I do not know for sure whether she has received the notice.”
Before the latest arrest revelations, the families of four legal activists received notices this week that their relatives had been charged with subversion. Those charged included two lawyers and an intern lawyer who worked for the Fengrui law firm in Beijing — where Wang and Bao also worked.
The law firm has become a focus in the government’s efforts to discredit rights lawyers as venal subversives abusing courts to create personal gain and “social chaos.”
Li said that claims laid out in reports on Chinese state-run television of rabble-rousing court disruptions by Wang, even if proved to be true, were “not enough to constitute subversion.”
The unusually heavy allegations of subversion illustrate the party leadership’s determination to dismantle the loose movement of lawyers who have used litigation, online appeals and publicity to challenge arbitrary power, said Maya Wang, a researcher on China for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.
“The scale of this roundup is unprecedented in recent years,” she said.
“This mass roundup of lawyers is meant to, through targeting lawyers affiliated with Fengrui law firm, strike fear at the community of human rights lawyers to significantly curtail their activism,” she said. “The authorities are basically labeling this modus operandi of the rights movement as a form of subversion.”
Wang Yu, 44, had defended Ilham Tohti, a professor accused of inciting separatism in his native Xinjiang who was sentenced last year to life in prison. She also represented Li Tingting (李婷婷), a women’s rights advocate detained in March last year over a planned protest against sexual harassment on public transportation.
Wang Yu, Bao and other firmmembers were taken away by the police in July last year, swept up in a wave of detentions of nearly 250 lawyers, legal workers and activists.
According to account by Amnesty International, 23 people caught up in that crackdown remain in custody or unaccounted for.
A Swede, Peter Jesper Dahlin, who worked in Beijing supporting Chinese rights activists, was also detained earlier this month. On Wednesday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Dahlin was being held and investigated “on suspicion of engaging in activities harmful to Chinese national security.”
Wang Yu and Bao suffered additional upheaval late last year, when their teenage son, Bao Zhuoxuan (包卓軒), was captured in a border town in Myanmar. The son had been denied permission to attend school in Australia, and he slipped into Myanmar as part of a plan that was to take him to the US via Thailand.
He was brought back to China and is living under surveillance with Wang’s mother in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.
Li said that she has been repeatedly rebuffed by the authorities when she sought to see Wang Yu, who is being held in Tianjin, where her husband is also in custody.
“It has been half a year since I last saw her,” Li said. “I went seven times, but I could not see her.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia