In China, a lawyer and his wife sentenced to prison for a meeting with European diplomats

Chinese lawyer Yu Wensheng in Beijing, January 12, 2017. FRED DUFOUR / AFP On the afternoon of April 13, 2023, they were to be received by the ambassador of the European Union (EU) to China, Jorge Toledo, and another European diplomat. But, while on their way, the couple was taken out of the subway in Beijing, the city where they live, by plainclothes agents. Yu Wensheng, a respected lawyer who had previously spent four years in prison for defending other Chinese rights activists and calling for constitutional reforms, was released in March 2022. His wife, Xu Yan, had continued throughout this period, to fight for him. “We were taken away,” Mr. Yu wrote on X with a photo showing him in front of a man wearing a cap and mask. Xu Yan filmed the scene. For the simple fact of having accepted the invitation to meet European diplomats, the couple was sentenced, Tuesday, October 29, to three years in prison for him, one year and nine months for her, according to the Weiquanwang website (network protection of rights). The initial charges of “provoking unrest” were reclassified by the Suzhou court of justice, where they were tried, a thousand kilometers from home, for a much more serious charge: “incitement to subversion of state power. Diplomats from around ten countries were prevented from attending the trial, which was held in late August. The European Union said it was “dismayed” by the news of their conviction. Chilling effect Mr. Yu received, in 2018, the Franco-German Prize for human rights and the rule of law and, in 2021, the Martin-Ennals prize for rights defenders. The detention of the couple has, for a year, had a chilling effect, particularly for foreign embassies faced with the new reality that a simple meeting with them could send a defender of Chinese rights to prison. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers European Union: dialogue with Beijing on human rights, despite everything Read later Yu Wensheng has distinguished himself in the past by daring to take up the case of Chinese people who showed their support for the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong , in 2014, then he defended some of his colleagues arrested during the so-called “709” repression, on July 9, 2015 (i.e. “7/09”, the Chinese writing the dates with the months on the left), when hundreds of The lawyers were placed in detention. Yu Wensheng could then have gone abroad, but he decided to stay to continue this work. In December 2023, the NGO Amnesty International learned that his wife, Xu Yan, had lost fourteen kilos during his detention, that his guards, despite the winter, gave him fewer blankets than the other detainees, who , brutalized her and that she suffered from being forced to sit in the same position for hours. You have 39.87% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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