IAPL
Zhou Xiaoyun reaches the end of a six-month stint in incommunicado detention, but looks set to remain behind bars.
Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have applied to arrest a human rights lawyer after holding him under residential surveillance for six months, his friend told RFA.
Rights lawyer Zhou Xiaoyun, who formerly worked as a senior editor at the cutting-edge Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper in Guangzhou, was initially detained by police in the northeastern province of Liaoning around six months ago on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
He was held incommunicado under RSDL, residential surveillance at a designated location, but now that the six-month limit has been reached, police have applied to the state prosecutor’s office for approval of his arrest, a friend of Zhou’s who gave only the surname Lu said.
Police in Guangdong’s Panshan county submitted the arrest application to the local procuratorate on Sept. 26, Lu said.
He said Zhou was being victimized by the Liaoning police.
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https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/arrest-09282021134539.html
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/held-09012021095314.html