709 crackdown

The 709 Crackdown (Chinese: 中国709维权律师大抓捕事件; pinyin: Zhōngguó 709 wéiquán lǜshī dàzhuābǔ shìjiàn; lit. 'China 709 mass arrest of civil rights lawyers incident' or 709案 '709 Case' for short) was a nationwide crackdown on Chinese lawyers and human rights activists instigated during the summer of 2015. It is known as the "709 crackdown" as it started on 9 July 2015.[1]

Wang Yaqiu of Human Rights Watch commented that "the 709 crackdown dealt a terrible blow to China’s rights-defense movement, which significantly contracted as rights lawyers were jailed, disbarred or placed under surveillance".[2]

Targets

More than 200 people were detained as part of the 2015 crackdown.[3] Some of the notable people affected by the crackdown are listed below.

  • Li Heping, former human rights lawyer who has been missing since his reported abduction in 2015.
  • Wang Quanzhang, arrested in August 2015, stood trial from December 2018 to January 2019, sentenced to 4.5 years imprisonment for subversion of state power,[4] and released from prison on 4 April 2020. Moved by authorities to his former residence in Jinan for two-week COVID-19 isolation period; his wife believes the government used the epidemic as an excuse to keep him under house arrest.[5]
  • Wang Yu, lawyer charged with inciting subversion of state power, but released on bail in 2016
  • Wu Gan, human rights activist known as the "Super Vulgar Butcher", who was sentenced to eight years in December 2017
  • Xiang Li, activist forbidden from leaving China during the crackdown, but who was smuggled out of China to Thailand in January 2018

On 17 June 2020, according to a report from Deutsche Welle, Yu Wensheng, who had defended Wang Quanzhang and publicly called for the removal of Xi as well as for reforms in the legal and political systems, was sentenced to four years in prison and deprived of political rights for three years.[6]

See also

References
  1. Sudworth, John (22 May 2017). "Wang Quanzhang: The lawyer who simply vanished". BBC News. Archived from the original on 27 December 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2018.
  2. Green, David (26 December 2018). "Chinese rights lawyer fires his own state-appointed lawyer in a dramatic court appearance". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 27 December 2018. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  3. "China's 'Super Vulgar Butcher' activist Wu Gan gets eight years". BBC News. 26 December 2017. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2018.
  4. Chin, Josh (28 January 2019). "China Civil-Rights Lawyer Sentenced to 4½ Years in Prison for Subversion". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 28 January 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  5. "Wang Quanzhang: China releases jailed human rights lawyer". BBC News. 5 April 2020. Archived from the original on 7 April 2020. Retrieved 8 April 2020.
  6. Yang, William (17 June 2020). "Yu Wensheng was sentenced to four years in prison and his wife Xu Yan criticized the secret sentence". DW (in Chinese). Retrieved 2 August 2020.
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