A human rights group yesterday condemned Chinese police for allegedly stripping and beating a prominent Shanghai lawyer during a nine-hour detention last week.
Police summoned Zheng Enchong (鄭恩寵), who has advised residents claiming to have been forcibly evicted, on Wednesday as part of an “economic investigation,” the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group said.
Calls to the Shanghai police went unanswered and Zheng was not immediately available for comment yesterday.
The group’s executive secretary Patrick Poon (潘嘉偉) said Zheng’s detention appeared to be linked to his work with the League of Chinese Victims, which seeks to draw attention to forced evictions in Shanghai.
“It is definitely a campaign of intimidation,” Poon said. “He has been warned not just once, but several times not to partake in the League of Chinese Victims and not to continue his legal rights work.”
Zheng has been detained 62 times since he was released from prison in June 2006 after serving a two-year sentence, but the latest incident was the most violent, Poon said, after speaking to people close to Zheng.
Police officers slapped Zheng’s face repeatedly, hit the back of his head and tried to burn his lips and eyelids with cigarettes, Poon said.
At one point, the officers pulled him up from his chair, kicked off his shoes and stripped him, leaving him standing in only his briefs, Poon said.
Officers then threw the contents of his pockets onto the floor, including money, keys, a pen and the Bible that Zheng, a devout Christian, was carrying, Poon said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
‘FIRST BATTLES’: Contact with North Korean soldiers on the battlefield has begun ‘a new chapter of instability in the world,’ the Ukrainian president said on Tuesday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday said that the Ukrainian military’s first clashes with North Korean troops had opened the way to more “instability in the world.” Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov said in an interview with South Korean television that the first armed engagements had occurred with North Korean troops in the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war. “The first battles with North Korean soldiers have opened a new chapter of instability in the world,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. Zelenskiy thanked those in the world who he said had reacted to the North Korean troops “not just with words ...