Lawyer is sent back to his place of household registration after serving 3 1/2 years for ‘subversion.’
Chinese authorities have released human rights attorney Chang Weiping, sending him to live in the southern island province of Hainan under a travel ban following the completion of his 3 1/2-year jail term for “subversion,” his U.S.-based wife said on Tuesday.
Chang was released from Weinan Prison near his birthplace in the northern province of Shaanxi on July 8, his wife Chen Zijuan told RFA Mandarin in an interview.
She said prison officers took him to Haikou, the provincial capital of Hainan, where his household registration, or “hukou,” is, but a place he has scant ties to now.
“Our family doesn’t have any property or any relatives there,” Chen said. “According to my understanding of the law, someone who has been released from prison ought to be free.”
Chang was arrested after attending a gathering of dissidents in the southeastern city of Xiamen in December 2019, and sentenced to three-and-a-half years for “incitement to subvert state power.”
The sentence came eight weeks after authorities in Shandong province handed down a 14-year sentence to prominent dissident Xu Zhiyong and a 12-year term to rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, who also attended the Xiamen gathering, on the same charges, prompting an international outcry.
Source:
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/human-rights-lawyer-chang-weiping-07092024135023.html
