With winter approaching, Xu Yan (許艷) brought some warm clothes and money to a detention center in eastern China for her husband, although she is not even sure the arrested human rights lawyer is still being held there.
Xu, 37, has traveled about 20 times from Beijing to Jiangsu Province’s Xuzhou in a vain struggle to get any information about Yu Wensheng (余文生) after he was taken into custody last year.
Her plight highlights the frustrations, fears and obstacles faced by the families of lawyers and activists who fall foul of the communist authorities and vanish into China’s selectively opaque legal system.
Photo: AFP
Xu returned again this week, joining the line at the Xuzhou City Detention Center with other people bringing plastic bags bulging with thick duvets and sweaters for inmates.
Along with Yu’s lawyers, she then made another failed attempt to get information from court officials.
“I still cannot check where my husband is or the status of his case,” said Xu, crying as she held a photograph of Yu and a sign demanding to see the judge responsible for his case outside the Xuzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Thursday.
“My husband just helps the disadvantaged and marginalized — and you locked him up for two years,” she said, as security guards tried to stop her from protesting.
Yu was detained in Beijing in January last year after he wrote an open letter calling for constitutional reforms.
Xu has received very little information since then.
She was able to have a five-minute video call with him in April last year. That day, she got a notice saying Yu was held in Xuzhou.
Xu only heard from her brother-in-law — and then later from her husband’s government lawyer — that Yu was put on trial in May, but nobody has told her if he was sentenced. Neither Yu nor his lawyers have been able to visit him.
“I feel helpless and also useless,” Xu said. “But in my heart, I’ve never considered giving up.”
It has come at an emotional — and financial — cost.
With no income, Xu is digging into her savings, spending about 150,000 Chinese yuan (US$21,310) over the past year in seeking justice.
Her husband’s detention has also disturbed their middle-school son, who witnessed his father’s arrest and several house searches by the police.
The boy has become more introverted and does not like leaving the house, she said.
“It’s as if he’s not as confident when seeing other people anymore,” she said. “That makes me very sad.”
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un renewed his call for a “limitless” expansion of his military nuclear program to counter US-led threats in comments reported yesterday that were his first direct criticism toward Washington since US president-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory on Oct. 6. At a conference with army officials on Friday, Kim condemned the US for updating its nuclear deterrence strategies with South Korea and solidifying three-way military cooperation involving Japan, which he portrayed as an “Asian NATO” that was escalating tensions and instability in the region. Kim also criticized the US over its support of Ukraine against a prolonged Russian invasion.
RSS