PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA：
ACTIVISTS APPROACHING ONE YEAR IN DETENTION

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

On 15 January 2018, four days before he was taken away by police in this current detention, Yu Wensheng received a letter from the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau that his legal practice license was suspended because he had not been employed by a registered law firm for over six months. He also received another letter from the bureau dated 12 January that his application for opening a new law firm was rejected as he repeatedly made comments opposing the Communist Party’s rule and attacking the country’s “socialist rule of law” system.

Yu Wensheng is a prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing. He represented a number of high profile human rights cases, including Falun Gong practitioners and fellow human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who was detained and charged with “subverting state power” during the mass crackdown on lawyers and activists in July 2015 and the only one whose whereabouts still remain unknown.

Yu Wensheng was detained for 99 days in 2014, later sharing with Amnesty International that he had been tortured during that time. On 13 October 2014, he was arrested by Daxing Public Security Bureau in Beijing after showing his support for the prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong. He was detained with death row inmates for 61 days and questioned approximately 200 times. Refused access to a lawyer during that detention, Yu Wensheng had 10 public security officers assigned to question him in three shifts every day. At the beginning the officers only abused him verbally. Later, they handcuffed him with his hands bound behind the back of the iron chair. He felt that his body’s muscles and bone joints were completely stretched. He said that two police officers repeatedly yanked the handcuffs and he screamed every time they pulled them.

Yu Wensheng was briefly detained again in October 2017 after he wrote an open letter criticizing President Xi Jinping as ill-suited to lead China due to his strengthening “totalitarian” rule over the country. His family and friends believed that Yu Wensheng’s current detention is related to his open letter.

On 23 January 2018, Shanghai-based news website The Paper released a news report with a heavily and abruptly edited video claiming that a lawyer surnamed Yu assaulted two police officers while resisting arrest on 19 January. The report was widely circulated on news search portals and social media platforms in China as Yu Wensheng’s name was mentioned in tweets and posts from unidentified social media accounts. It seems to be an attempt to discredit the lawyer using similar tactics that have been seen in other cases of detained lawyers and activists.

The detention of lawyer Wang Yu and her family on 9 July 2015 marked the beginning of an unprecedented government crackdown on human rights lawyers and other activists. Over the following weeks, almost 250 lawyers and activists were questioned or detained by state security agents, and many of their offices and homes were raided. As of December 2017, nine individuals had been convicted for “subverting state power”, “inciting subversion of state power” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. Five of them remain imprisoned, three were given suspended prison sentences and one “exempted from criminal punishment” while remaining under surveillance. Lawyer Wang Quanzhang who has been indicted but awaits a trial, is being held incommunicado without access to a lawyer, and is at risk of torture or other ill-treatment.

Further information on UA: 19/18 Index: ASA 17/8106/2018 Issue Date: 21 March 2018

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Yu Wensheng is a prominent human rights lawyer in Beijing. He represented a number of high profile human rights cases, including Falun Gong practitioners and fellow human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who was detained and charged with “subverting state power” during the mass crackdown on lawyers and activists starting in July 2015, and who was sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment on 28 January 2019 after having been detained for nearly two and a half years.

Yu Wensheng was formally arrested by the Xuzhou City Public Security Bureau (XCPSB) on 19 April 2018 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power” and “obstructing the duties of public officers”. If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment for the charge of “inciting subversion of state power”.

On 15 January 2018, four days before he was taken away by police, Yu Wensheng received a letter from the Beijing Municipal Justice Bureau that his legal practice license was suspended because he had not been employed by a registered law firm for over six months. He also received another letter from the bureau, dated 12 January 2018, that his application for opening a new law firm was rejected as he repeatedly made comments opposing the Communist Party’s rule and attacking the country’s “socialist rule of law” system.

Yu Wensheng was already detained for 99 days in 2014, later sharing with Amnesty International that he had been tortured during that time. On 13 October 2014, he was arrested by Daxing Public Security Bureau in Beijing after showing his support for the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. He told Amnesty International that he was held with death row inmates for 61 days and questioned approximately 200 times. Refused access to a lawyer during that detention, Yu Wensheng had 10 public security officers assigned to question him in three shifts every day. At the beginning, the officers only abused him verbally. Later, they handcuffed him with his hands bound behind the back of the iron chair. He felt that his body’s muscles and bone joints were completely stretched. He said that two police officers repeatedly yanked the handcuffs and he screamed every time they pulled them.

Yu Wensheng was briefly detained again in October 2017 after he wrote an open letter criticizing President Xi Jinping as ill-suited to lead China due to his strengthening “totalitarian” rule over the country. His family and friends believe that Yu Wensheng’s current detention is related to this open letter.

On 23 January 2018, Shanghai-based news website The Paper released a news report with a heavily and abruptly edited video claiming that a lawyer surnamed Yu assaulted two police officers while resisting arrest on 19 January. The report was widely circulated on news search portals and social media platforms in China as Yu Wensheng’s name was mentioned in tweets and posts from unidentified social media accounts. According to his friends and supporters, it seems to be an attempt to discredit the lawyer using similar tactics that have been seen in other cases of detained lawyers and activists.

The detention of lawyer Wang Yu and her family on 9 July 2015 marked the beginning of an unprecedented government crackdown on human rights lawyers and other activists. Over the following weeks, almost 250 lawyers and activists were questioned or detained by state security agents, and many of their offices and homes were raided. As of December 2017, nine individuals had been convicted for “subverting state power”, “inciting subversion of state power” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. Five of them remain in prison, three were given suspended prison sentences and one was “exempted from criminal punishment” while remaining under surveillance. A tenth person, lawyer Wang Quanzhang, was sentenced to four a half years’ imprisonment on 28 January 2019.