Chinese human rights lawyers have been scrambling to assist the friends and families of people arrested during a wave of anti-lockdown protests over the weekend, many of whom have little experience being treated as dissidents by Chinese authorities.
Human Rights lawyers provide volunteer legal service to arrested protestors in China. #A4Revolution #???? https://t.co/oa8JxBAxdG
— The 29 Principles (@the29principles) November 29, 2022
“So many people have been calling,” attorney Wang Shengsheng told RFA on Tuesday. “Our phones were blowing up because people had lost contact with their friends, and we found that people had been taken away in many different places, including Shanghai, Beijing, Ningbo, Kunming, Yunnan and Guizhou.”
The rush of calls came after Wang and nine other lawyers published a list of attorneys offering to volunteer to help people detained for protesting China’s “zero-COVID” restrictions or mourning the victims of a Nov. 24 lockdown fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi.
“The main reason [for their being detained] was that they had paid their respects to the victims of the fire in Xinjiang,” Wang said. “They would express their condolences or empathy by holding up a blank sheet of paper, only to be very quickly detained.
Today on the #WHRDDay, ISHR, and other orgs call on Chinese authorities to drop all charges against Li Yuhan & release her immediately and unconditionally!
Read our joint statement here ?????? pic.twitter.com/4SVBWAfKMQ
— ISHR (@ISHRglobal) November 29, 2022
“Some people couldn’t understand why this had happened, and were shocked and hurt — they never thought they could come to any harm,” she said.
Wang said the lawyers had also received a number of threatening phone calls, with unidentified callers warning them “not to be taken advantage of.”
‘I want to thank them’
The ruling Chinese Communist Party, faced with the biggest challenge to its rule in decades, is saying that the “white paper” protests are the work of “foreign forces” infiltrating China, a notion that has been met with widespread derision among protesters and social media users.
Some lawyers declined to take part in the volunteer network, believing they would risk losing their license to practice law by participating, as happened to many attorneys who spoke up in favor of human rights, or helped political dissidents and other marginalized groups considered a stability risk by authorities.
Chow Hang-tung is a young human rights defender and lawyer who is currently imprisoned in #HongKong.
Her alleged crime?
Holding vigils to commemorate the victims of the #TiananmenSquare crackdown. Demand her release ?#W4R22 ?? pic.twitter.com/oB8pK55CEG
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) November 29, 2022
“A fellow lawyer said it wasn’t appropriate and reminded me of the risks, but … I just want to provide them with whatever help I can,” Wang said. “If I didn’t, I would regret it hugely … because these people stood up to express something, not for themselves [but for others].”
“I want to thank them and … do anything in my power to support them at this time, or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself,” she said.
[…]
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/protests-11292022111317.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/29/china/china-protest-crackdown-intl-hnk/index.html
https://29principles.uk/en/contents/joint-statement-calling-release-li-yuhan
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/joint-statement-calling-release-li-yuhan
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63796135
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/709_crackdown
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvmapd/china-covid-protests-vigil-fire-arrests-urumqi
