Activist subjected to torture and charged with subversion
Xu Zhiyong was among dozens of lawyers and activists who attended an informal gathering held in Xiamen, a city on China’s southeast coast, in December 2019. Many presents at this private gathering had been active in the New Citizens Movement, a loose network of activists who aimed to promote government transparency and expose corruption in the early 2010s. At the meeting, they discussed the situation of civil society and current affairs in China. Since 26 December 2019, police across the country have been summoning or detaining participants of the Xiamen gathering.
Friends of Xu Zhiyong say he went into hiding after the meeting in December 2019. In early February 2020, Xu criticized President Xi Jinping’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests and called on him to resign. On 15 February 2020, Xu was detained while staying at the home of a fellow activist and held incommunicado until 21 January 2021.
Xu Zhiyong’s situation is very similar to human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, who was detained at the same time after attending the Xiamen gathering. The authorities investigated their cases together until 20 January 2021, after which their charges were changed to “subversion of state power” and their lawyers were informed that their cases would be handled separately. No trial dates have yet been confirmed Li Qiaochu, a labour rights and feminist activist and Xu Zhiyong’s partner, was held in secret detention from February to June 2020. As a result of her continued call for Xu’s release and better treatment, Li was again detained by the authorities on 6 February 2021 and is currently being held in the same detention centre as Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi. It is currently unclear whether her case is being handled together with either Xu or Ding.
Xu Zhiyong is a prominent Chinese legal scholar and rights activist known for his work on behalf of disadvantaged groups and his promotion of a “New Citizens’ Movement”, a loose network of activists founded by Xu to promote government transparency and expose corruption in 2012. He has been jailed previously for his peaceful activism, spending four years in prison on trumped-up public order charges from 2013 to 2017.
Since the massive crackdown on lawyers and activists in 2015, the Chinese authorities have been systematically using national security charges with extremely vague provisions, such as “subverting state power” and “inciting subversion of state power”, to prosecute lawyers, scholars, journalists, activists and NGO workers.