Wang Yu (lawyer)

Wang Yu ( Chinese  王宇 , Pinyin Wáng yǔ , born May 1, 1971 ) is an internationally known Chinese human rights attorney . She was arrested in July 2015 when the Chinese authorities raided human rights lawyers. Wang has been charged with inciting the public to overthrow state power, which is a serious crime in China and carries a life sentence.

Crackdown on human rights lawyers

Wang is an attorney with the Fengrui Law Firm in Beijing . According to the New York Times , Fengrui is one of the law firms the government is focusing on discrediting human rights lawyers as "purchasable subversive elements that abuse courts for personal gain to promote 'social chaos'" . Besides Wang, her husband Bao Longjun, two other lawyers, and one other intern were also arrested. During the same period, the wave of arrests reached around 250 lawyers and activists. In January, Peter Jesper Dahlinn, a Swede who supported human rights activists in Beijing, was arrested for "activities that threaten national security".

According to Human Rights Watch , this practice is "unprecedented" in recent times and shows that this "unusually grave allegation of 'subversion' shows the party leaders' determination to break the loose movement of attorneys through legal process, online appeals and the Challenge the public to the arbitrariness of state power. "

career

Before Wang Yu became a human rights attorney, she was a commercial law attorney . In 2008, she had an argument with railroad workers during an incident at a Tianjin train station . They would not let her get on the train even though she had a valid ticket. Although she was ill-treated by several men in the incident, she was charged with "willful assault" and detained for two and a half years. In prison, she learned how prisoners were ill-treated and tortured . After her release in 2011, she chose to become a human rights attorney and took on high-profile cases.

Since then, she has been part of the Chinese human rights movement. Her clients include Ilham Tohti , a well-known Uighur intellectual who was sentenced to life imprisonment for "inciting separatism"; Li Tingting , a women's rights lawyer who was arrested in March 2015 for planning to protest sexual harassment on public transport; the women's rights group "Feminists Five" and supporters of the illegally banned spiritual group Falun Gong. Because she used social media to champion her affairs, it eventually led to her arrest. The charge was undermining state authority , which is widely used against dissidents who challenge the Communist Party on a political level. In 2015, the government- sponsored Xinhua News Agency published a post intended to damage Wang's reputation. The post said, “This arrogant woman with a criminal record turned into a lawyer overnight; it babbles about legal principles, human rights and justice, and wandering around under the flag of the 'right of defense'. "

In August 2016, Wang Yu and her husband were released on parole and had to reside far from Beijing in Ulanhot , Inner Mongolia (in Chinese: 指定 居所 監視 居住  - “ Specified Residence with surveillance”). After a year they were allowed to return to Beijing. In a brief statement that was shown on Chinese state television CCTV on August 6, 2016, Wang said that she would not accept the ABA human rights award (see below) that she had been awarded because she had done nothing essential in the field of human rights Award would only see an attempt to damage the reputation of the Chinese government and the reputation of China in general. In another interview with the Hong Kong television broadcaster Phoenix ( 凤凰 卫视 ), which is also under the control of the Beijing government , she said that she did not want to accept these or similar awards in the future and that, as a Chinese, she recognized the leadership role of the Chinese government.

In subsequent statements in 2018, Wang stated that her confession at the time, which led to her release, and subsequent interviews were forced. The authorities told her that this was the only way she could see her son again. This is the only way for her son to study abroad that she wants. During the interrogation, she was tied to an iron chair for five long days, was sleep deprived and was placed in a cell so small that you could not stretch your legs. After long deliberation, she allowed herself to be persuaded to do the interviews so as not to destroy her son's future prospects.

Awards

Wang Yu's human rights work was featured in the 2016 documentary film Hooligan Sparrow by Nanfu Wang. On June 4, 2016, Wang Yu was awarded the 21st prestigious Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Award, also known as the “Award given by lawyers to a lawyer”.

On July 8, 2016, the American Bar Association (ABA) recognized Wang Yu with the International Human Rights Award in recognition of her work to improve human rights in China.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Chris Buckley, China Arrests Rights Lawyer and Her Husband on Subversion Charges , The New York Times, January 13, 2016, accessed November 18, 2016
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Anna Fifield, She was a quiet commercial lawyer. Then China turned against her , The Washington Post, July 18, 2015, accessed November 18, 2016
3. ↑ ^{a b} Jinyan Zeng, China's feminist five: 'This is the worst crackdown on lawyers, activists and scholars in decades' , The Guardian UK, April 17, 2015, accessed November 18, 2016
4. ↑ 锋锐 所 律师 王宇 ： 不 接受 所谓 “人权 奖” (“Wang Yu, Fengrui lawyer does not accept the so-called 'human rights award'”). CCTV, August 6, 2016, accessed December 27, 2018 (Chinese). 
5. ↑ 凤凰 早 班车 律师 王宇 羁押 1 年 余 近日 取保候审 ("Phoenix morning broadcast: lawyer was imprisoned for more than a year"). Phoenix Satellite TV, August 2, 2016, accessed December 27, 2018 (Chinese). 
6. ↑ Joyce Huang: China Lawyer Crackdown Enters 4th Year. Voice of America, July 19, 2018, accessed December 27, 2018 . 
7. ^ 'My son is everything to me': how China forced lawyer Wang Yu to denounce her human rights award. Hong Kong Free Press, May 13, 2018, accessed December 27, 2018 . 
8. ↑ URGENT ACTION ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Hooligan Sparrow, accessed November 18, 2016 
9. ↑ The XXIst "Ludovic-Trarieux" Human Rights International Prize 2016 , The Ludovic-Trarieux Award, accessed on 18 November 2016