January 10, 2019
The wife of detained Chinese rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who has been held incommunicado without trial since 2015, has met with foreign diplomats together with Wang Qiaoling, wife of rights lawyer Li Heping, RFA has learned.
“Yesterday morning, I and Wang Qiaoling met with diplomats in charge of human rights from … the U.K., U.S., Germany, the E.U., Switzerland and Austria,” Wang’s wife Li Wenzu told RFA on Thursday.
“Wang Quanzhang has been detained for three-and-a-half years, and I still know nothing about the trial,” she said. “I am starting to get very worried and anxious, because there has been no new information during the past couple of weeks.”
Li said the conversation had largely focused on her message to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
“I wanted them to pass on a very clear demand from me to the Chinese government, that the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court issue its verdict immediately,” she said.
“The [trial] ended … so the fact that they still haven’t issued a verdict indicates that they want to drag things out still longer, until everyone has forgotten about the whole thing,” Li said.
“They will then deal with the case when nobody is thinking about it any more,” she said.
Li said state security police had issued the families of rights lawyers and activists detained in a nationwide crackdown since July 2015 with the same warning; not to meet with foreign diplomats.
“The state security police wants the relatives to abide by four prohibitions, the most important of which was that we shouldn’t meet with diplomats,” she said. “But our situation would be far worse if it weren’t for international attention on the July 2015 cases.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelstam_Prize
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/harassment-against-wang-quanzhang-family
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/12/rights-lawyer-wang-quanzhang-tried-in-closed-hearing/
RED BUCKET PROTEST IN SUPPORT OF THE EDELSTAM PRIZE 2018 LAUREATE – LI WENZU
During the Edelstam Prize 2018 award ceremony, the Chinese sign for love was exposed, and all persons engaged in organizing the ceremony, wore the Chinese sign for love on their hearts. The theme of love and happiness pervaded the whole ceremony, especially in the end when children sang “We are the world,” everyone holding a red bucket with the Chinese sign of love to show support for Li Wenzu, responsible for organizing the important “Red Bucket Protest,” which took place on July 7, 2017 in front of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in Beijing. All the guests received a red chocolate heart when leaving the ceremony.
During the “Red Bucket Protest,” the wives of the detained human rights lawyers gathered in front of the Procuratorate in bright and red clothes with red accessories and red buckets, a color of love and happiness, to publicize their demand for information and access to the prisoners. On their dresses they had printed their husband’s names and messages of love. All the participants in the protest were finally detained, some of them badly beaten. Diplomats were not allowed into the Procuratorate.
(The Edelstam Prize 29/10/19)
