Human rights lawyer Xie Yang (謝陽) has been detained in China on suspicion of “inciting state subversion,” according to an official notice obtained by his wife weeks after he spoke out for a hospitalized teacher.
Xie — who has previously defended Christians and democracy advocates — has not been heard from since he was detained more than a week ago in Changsha, Hunan Province.
Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on civil society since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took power in 2012, tightening restrictions on freedom of speech, and detaining hundreds of rights advocates and lawyers.
Photo: AFP
The police notice, dated Monday and seen by Agence France-Presse (AFP), said 49-year-old Xie had been held on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power, and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” — a catch-all phrase often used against dissidents and rights advocates.
“I am very angry that he has been detained on trumped-up charges,” his wife, Chen Guiqiu (陳桂秋), said from the US, where she lives with their two children.
His home was also ransacked, Chen said.
“Anything that could be opened was opened or torn open, even his pillows were ripped apart,” she said, adding that two computers and his safe were missing.
His detention comes weeks after he tried to visit a teacher, Li Tiantian (李田田), who friends said was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital after expressing sympathy for views questioning Beijing’s narrative of the Nanjing Massacre in 1937. The tragedy is a hugely sensitive topic in China.
Li was believed to have been held after she publicly sympathized with a Shanghai professor who questioned the official death toll of 300,000 attributed to the six-week spree of killing, rape and destruction.
Xie was a vocal advocate for the 27-year-old pregnant teacher, who authorities have said was willingly admitted to the hospital.
Last month, he shared a video on Twitter showing himself outside the local police headquarters holding a poster calling for her release.
The Changsha Public Security Bureau declined to comment, while the detention center and local propaganda department did not answer telephone calls.
“Xie Yang has participated in almost all the hot-button issues in China,” said rights advocate Cheng Xiaofeng (程曉峰), who attempted to visit the hospital with Xie. “His actions probably make the authorities very uncomfortable.”
Xie was previously detained for almost two years during the “709 crackdown” targeting human rights advocates and lawyers in 2015, when he said he was tortured.
Another human rights lawyer, Yang Maodong (楊茂), was arrested last week also on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power,” a police notice shared with AFP showed. He had been detained in Guangzhou since last month.
Yang has repeatedly been imprisoned because of his advocacy.
Yang’s wife died of cancer in the US last week, after he was prevented from leaving China to reunite with her.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS