On 1 March 2022, EFE reported that Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, sentenced to 4 years in 2020 for “inciting subversion of state power,” was released Tuesday from prison in the eastern city of Nanjing, according to a Twitter post by his wife Xu Yan. Yu Wensheng was on a train bound for Beijing according to his wife, who awaits him at a hotel in the capital.
During the few meetings with his lawyer, Yu has claimed to have suffered torture and mistreatment during his confinement that may have caused him to lose part of the mobility of his right hand.
ISHR, the Martin Ennals Foundation and eight other major human rights groups urge in a joint statement the Chinese government to ensure lawyer Yu Wensheng is able to leave Nanjing Prison on March 1st, and freely reunite with his family in Beijing.
The signatory organisations also called in the joint statement for sustained attention on the growing risks and threats his wife, Xu Yan, faces for advocating for his rights and release.
For this, the authorities revoked his legal license on 16 January, 2018. Three days later, he was forcibly disappeared, a day after publishing an open letter calling for constitutional reform. He was put on trial in secret on 9 May 2019, but his wife, Xu Yan, was only informed of his four-years jail sentence in June 2020.
The signatories of the joint statement express grave concern that Yu Wensheng may be put under a de facto home arrest, severely restricted in his movements and communication, and unable to reunite with his family in Beijing.
Human rights lawyers have endured such restrictions upon leaving prison on grounds of a supplemental sentence of ‘deprivation of political rights’, in a phenomenon known as ‘non-release release’. In September 2019, UN experts condemned the use of this practice against lawyer Jiang Tianyong as ‘gratuitously punitive and legally unjustified’.
IThe signatory organisations urge the Chinese authorities to:
Ensure that Yu Wensheng is able to reunite with his family in Beijing on 1 March, to exercise his rights to move and communicate freely, and that he is not subjected to surveillance and harassment. He must also be able to resume his legal work without restrictions;
Put an end to the surveillance and harassment of Yu Wensheng’s family;
Guarantee in all circumstances that all lawyers in China, including human rights lawyers, are able to carry out their legitimate professional duties without fear of reprisals and free of restrictions.
The wife of Yu Wensheng, a jailed human rights lawyer, has set up a legal firm to help persons struggling with China’s justice system. Xu Yan’s husband is currently serving a four-year sentence on the charges of ‘incitement to subvert state authority.’ “My husband will be allowed to return home in around four months, but his law licence will be cancelled. This will have a significant impact on his profession as well as our family,” Yan was quoted as saying by Radio Free Asia. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/06/24/martin-ennals-foundation-reaches-out-today/] Notably, he had received the Martin Ennals Award 2021 for his work as a human rights defender earlier this year. [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/69fc7057-b583-40c3-b6fa-b8603531248e]
According to Radio Free Asia, the Martin Ennals Foundation labelled Yu “one of the best-known and most intrepid human rights campaigners” in China, noting that he had been subjected to arbitrary arrest, a secret trial, and the revocation of his law licence.
Martin Ennals Foundation, together with the Geneva Academy, IBAHRI, and ODAGE, is organizing a high-level panel discussion on how to effectively defend human rights lawyers in authoritarian times. Today 24 June at 13h30 Geneva time. With Belarussian human rights activist Tatsiana Khomich, sister of political prisoner Maria Kalasnikova; Xu Yan, wife of 2021 Martin Ennals Laureate Yu Wensheng of China; and Turkish human rights lawyer Ayşe Acinikli. You will also have the opportunity to hear Diego García-Sayán, UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and ISHR Director Phil Lynch.
The MEA has also started an occasional newsletter with in this summer edition:
After a successful campaign, nominations for the 2022 Martin Ennals Award are now closed. We are excited by the high-quality nominations and thank those who contributed to our search for the next generation of human rights heroes. Meanwhile, our support for human rights defenders continues through the Martin Ennals programs.
Director Isabel de Sola shares how education is paving the way for a more sustainable human rights movement. She informs about the Foundation’s education project – a program aimed at familiarizing students with the concept of human rights and the causes promoted by our Defenders.
Programme Officer Cristina Rendón writes “It takes a village to protect defenders”. Because the three 2021 awardees were unable to communicate freely with the Martin Ennals Foundation, we had to reinvent our “Geneva Residency” programme by extending its activities to the support networks of our awardees. We learned about the importance of building a strong network of allies who can support defenders, in the good times and the bad
Yu Wensheng was detained in Beijing in January 2018 in front of his young son just hours after he wrote an open letter calling for constitutional reforms, including multi-candidate elections.
“His physical state is very poor. His right hand is deformed and trembles so much that he cannot write,” his wife Xu Yan told AFP. Last week, she was allowed to have a 25-minute video call with her husband, who is being held in a detention centre in the eastern province of Jiangsu. It was their first such meeting in three years, she said. Four of Yu’s teeth were missing and he was unable to chew food properly, Xu said, and that there was no heating in the detention centre.. “There are probably a lot of things he cannot say right now, we will only know the full extent of what he experienced after he is released,” she said.
Xu said her husband’s nomination “not only supports and honours (him), but is also encouragement and affirmation to other human rights lawyers and defenders”. Yu’s defence lawyer Lu Siwei had his legal licence revoked by authorities last week after handling several sensitive human rights cases..
Beijing denied knowledge of either Yu or the Martin Ennals Award on Tuesday. “There are indeed some people abroad who are always using human rights as a pretext to create a disturbance,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a regular briefing on Tuesday. “I think this behaviour has no meaning whatsoever.”
