Beijing,
\nThe German commissioner for human rights on Wednesday called for the immediate release of disbarred rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who was arrested by the Chinese authorities on January 19 and later charged with inciting subversion.<\/p>\n
Chinese President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on human rights activism in China that has seen hundreds of rights lawyers and activists detained, dozens arrested and some handed lengthy prison sentences.<\/p>\n
Yu, an outspoken critic of the government clampdown who had worked to defend fellow lawyers who were arrested in the sweep, was disbarred on January 15, days before he was detained by authorities outside his home in Beijing.<\/p>\n
Initially charged with \u201cobstructing a public service\u201d, Yu is now being investigated for \u201cinciting subversion of state power\u201d, Yu\u2019s wife Xu Yan said earlier this week, adding that the police had also summonsed her in relation to her husband\u2019s charges.<\/p>\n
German commissioner Barbel Kofler said in a statement posted online that the latest developments in Yu\u2019s case were \u201cunsettling\u201d and had increased his concerns about the rights situation in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll Yu Wensheng has done is campaign for democratic reforms in China and support fellow citizens who were harassed for exercising their human rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yu should be released without delay and granted the civil rights guaranteed in the Chinese constitution, he added.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
China regularly rejects criticism of its human rights record and says that such statements seek to interfere in China\u2019s internal affairs, as well as saying that China is a country with the rule of law and that jailed rights activists are criminals.<\/p>\n
The day before Yu\u2019s detention, he released a strongly worded open letter in which he called for the deletion of a preamble of China\u2019s state constitution, a section that grants the Chinese Communist Party primacy in leadership.<\/p>\n
The letter was the latest in a series of statements Yu had made critical of the party and its leadership, including calling for Xi to be replaced as party leader.<\/p>\n
Yu\u2019s case, alongside the surprise disbarring of a second prominent rights lawyer Sui Muqing shortly after, have sparked outcry from China\u2019s rights activists and their supporters both inside China and overseas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beijing, The German commissioner for human rights on Wednesday called for the immediate release of disbarred rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who was arrested by the Chinese authorities on January 19 and later charged with inciting subversion. Chinese President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on human rights activism in China that has seen hundreds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20569,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20567\/revisions\/20569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}