Mon, Apr 06, 2020 page1

• China frees rights lawyer detained in 2015 crackdown

  NOT FREE YET: Wang Quanzhang has been sent far from his family to serve a 14-day quarantine amid fears that he will then be placed under house arrest

  • AFP, BEIJING
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  A leading Chinese human rights lawyer has been released from prison after almost five years behind bars, his wife said yesterday.

  Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), 44, was first detained in 2015 in a sweeping crackdown on more than 200 lawyers and government critics.

  He was escorted yesterday to a property he owns in Shandong Province for 14 days in quarantine as a precaution against the coronavirus, his wife, Li Wenzu (李文足), said in Beijing.

  

  Li Wenzu holds a cellphone showing a photograph of her husband, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, during an interview in Beijing on June 15, 2016.

  Photo: EPA-EFE

  Li said she feared Wang would be placed under house arrest, despite his release from prison, and would be subject to surveillance.

  “I think [authorities] have been lying to us step by step,” Li said. “They used the pretext of the epidemic as an excuse to quarantine him for 14 days when he should have been able to return to his home in Beijing according to the relevant legal guidelines.”

  Wang’s initial detention in 2015 came as part of the so-called “709” crackdown, nicknamed as such because it began on July 9 that year, but it was not until January last year that he was sentenced after a closed-door trial to four-and-a-half years in prison for “subverting state power.”

  

  Li Wenzu, right, the wife of human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, talks with their son, Wang Guangwei, at their home in Beijing on Jan. 28 last year.

  Photo: AFP

  A prominent lawyer who has defended political activists and victims of land seizures, Wang was held incommunicado prior to the trial.

  “I am really worried they plan on putting him under long-term house arrest and will prevent us from being reunited as a family,” said Li, who has campaigned for her husband’s release.

  Police had forcibly evicted tenants from Wang’s property in the city of Jinan to make way for his return to Shandong, she said.

  She said Wang called her from the prison on Saturday, telling her to not to go to meet him at the prison.

  In a recording she posted on Twitter, Wang said he had to be quarantined “for some time” due to the pandemic.

  When Li angrily asked whether he was prompted to say that under duress, he said: “We’ll be back together, but there’ll be a process.”

  “His speech is being restricted. He phoned me yesterday saying he would go to Jinan,” she said. “Is this what a rational person would do after being separated from their wife and child for almost five years?”

  Li’s first trip to see her husband since his detention in 2015 came in June last year when she was granted a prison visit after repeated denials, she said.

  Eleven human rights and legal concern groups — including some based in Taiwan and Hong Kong — released a joint statement calling on authorities to ensure Wang’s freedom from house arrest, surveillance or any other form of control.

  “Wang Quanzhang is one of many lawyers, activists, writers, and others who never should have spent a day in jail — he committed no crime,” Human Rights Watch’s China director Sophie Richardson said.

  “Chinese authorities can begin [righting] that wrong by respecting his freedom, but if the past is any guide he will continue to be arbitrarily surveilled and constrained,” she added.

  Additional reporting by the Guardian
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