Detained Chinese professor who criticised Xi is freed
BEIJING: A Chinese academic who penned an essay blaming the coronavirus pandemic on President Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism and censorship has been released after nearly a week in detention, his friends said.
Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, was taken from his home in the capital by a group of more than 20 people on July 6, according to associates.
He returned home on Sunday, two friends confirmed speaking on condition of anonymity.
In an essay published on overseas websites, Prof Xu had written that the leadership system under Mr Xi — China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong — was “destroying the structure of governance”.
He said the lack of openness contributed to the outbreak of the coronavirus, which first appeared in China late last year and spread globally after Communist Party officials tried to suppress initial news.
It was not immediately clear whether he would face further repercussions.
Beijing police did not immediately respond to a request for comment yesterday.
A friend of Prof Xu’s said on July 6 that a man claiming to be police called the professor’s wife to say he had been arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitutes, which the friend dismissed as “ridiculous and shameless”.
The professor — a rare government critic in the censored world of Chinese academia — had been put under house arrest a week prior to being taken into custody, the friend had said.
In a previous essay circulated online, Prof Xu spoke out against the 2018 abolition of presidential term limits, which left Mr Xi free to rule for life.
After Tsinghua reportedly barred Prof Xu from teaching and research in 2019, hundreds of Tsinghua alumni — and academics around the world — signed an online petition calling for his reinstatement.
The US and the EU last week called
Prof Xu’s detention a human rights violation, pressing for his release.
“It’s good news that Professor Xu has been released, but he should have not been detained in the first place,” said Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Ms Wang called the prostitution accusation “laughable”, saying it was a common government tactic used to smear and silence critics.
Prof Xu is just the latest in a wave of intellectuals swept up in what critics say is a crackdown by Mr Xi on dissent in all spheres of public life.
Legal scholar Zhang Xuezhong was briefly detained by Shanghai police in May after publishing a letter criticising Beijing’s handling of the virus and calling for a democratic government.