Jailed rights lawyer freed but disappears
BEIJING: A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer disappeared on the day of his scheduled release from prison on Thursday and was reportedly taken away by unknown persons.
Jiang Tianyong, who defended politically sensitive clients like blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng and followers of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual group, completed a two-year sentence handed down for crimes against the state.
But supporters who arrived at the prison in Henan province were told that unknown individuals had already picked him up and taken him away, said his wife Jin Bianling.
“The Chinese government is so shameless,” Jin said in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where she lives with their 16-year-old daughter.
“He’s completed his sentence now, so he should be free,” she said. “Is Chinese law just a piece of scrap paper?”
Jiang’s sister and father have also been missing since Wednes- day afternoon, when state security agents were supposed to be escorting them to the prison, Jin said.
Calls to the prison on Thursday rang unanswered.
China has increasingly placed those it considers dissidents under various types of extra-legal detention even after they have served their sentences, with no due process or additional charges filed. Chen, the blind legal activist, was confined for years at his home in a northern Chinese village, guarded around-the-clock until his escape in 2012.