With winter approaching, Xu Yan (許艷) brought some warm clothes and money to a detention center in eastern China for her husband, although she is not even sure the arrested human rights lawyer is still being held there.
Xu, 37, has traveled about 20 times from Beijing to Jiangsu Province’s Xuzhou in a vain struggle to get any information about Yu Wensheng (余文生) after he was taken into custody last year.
Her plight highlights the frustrations, fears and obstacles faced by the families of lawyers and activists who fall foul of the communist authorities and vanish into China’s selectively opaque legal system.
Photo: AFP
Xu returned again this week, joining the line at the Xuzhou City Detention Center with other people bringing plastic bags bulging with thick duvets and sweaters for inmates.
Along with Yu’s lawyers, she then made another failed attempt to get information from court officials.
“I still cannot check where my husband is or the status of his case,” said Xu, crying as she held a photograph of Yu and a sign demanding to see the judge responsible for his case outside the Xuzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Thursday.
“My husband just helps the disadvantaged and marginalized — and you locked him up for two years,” she said, as security guards tried to stop her from protesting.
Yu was detained in Beijing in January last year after he wrote an open letter calling for constitutional reforms.
Xu has received very little information since then.
She was able to have a five-minute video call with him in April last year. That day, she got a notice saying Yu was held in Xuzhou.
Xu only heard from her brother-in-law — and then later from her husband’s government lawyer — that Yu was put on trial in May, but nobody has told her if he was sentenced. Neither Yu nor his lawyers have been able to visit him.
“I feel helpless and also useless,” Xu said. “But in my heart, I’ve never considered giving up.”
It has come at an emotional — and financial — cost.
With no income, Xu is digging into her savings, spending about 150,000 Chinese yuan (US$21,310) over the past year in seeking justice.
Her husband’s detention has also disturbed their middle-school son, who witnessed his father’s arrest and several house searches by the police.
The boy has become more introverted and does not like leaving the house, she said.
“It’s as if he’s not as confident when seeing other people anymore,” she said. “That makes me very sad.”
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
RSS