China targets lawyers’ sons
One is detained and the other denied a passport, evidently to punish their fathers.
LONDON — Chinese authorities have refused to issue a passport to the son of a prominent human rights lawyer, underscoring the ruling Communist Party’s tendency to punish the relatives of those it deems harmful to the state.
The denial came days after police detained the 16year old son of another human rights lawyer as he attempted to flee the country through Myanmar.
Liu Xiaoyuan, a partner at the Beijing-based Fengrui law firm, said that his son, Liu Yuyang, a 21-year-old university student in the southeastern Chinese city of Nanchang, was denied a passport Thursday, dashing his plans to attend graduate school in the United States.
Local authorities told Liu Yuyang that higher-level officials in Beijing had rejected his application and asked whether he was a member of any “subversive foreign organizations.”
“My son had nothing to do with Fengrui,” said Liu, who has defended prominent government critics such as artist Ai Weiwei and ethnic Uighur academic Ilham Tohti. “I can’t understand why this would happen to my family. This is a Cultural Revolution-style way of doing things.”
In July, President Xi Jinping oversaw the country’s most severe crackdown on human rights lawyers in recent history; authorities detained or interrogated more than 220 people nationwide, according to Amnesty International. (Liu Xiaoyuan was detained for three days during the crackdown, then released without charge.)
On Oct. 9, authorities detained Bao Zhuoxuan, 16, the son of detained human rights lawyer Wang Yu and activist Bao Longjun, as he attempted to flee China through Mong La, a barely regulated casino town in northern Myanmar. Two adults accompanying Zhuoxuan in Mong La were also detained; their identities and current whereabouts remain unknown.
Zhuoxuan intended to travel to the U.S. through Thailand, said Zhou Fengsuo, a San Francisco-based human rights campaigner who planned to aid his journey. Zhou said that police took Zhuoxuan to Ulanhot, a small city in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, where he is staying with his grandparents under tight surveillance.
Both of Zhuoxuan’s parents have been in detention since July, though neither has been formally accused of a crime.
Wang, also an employee of Fengrui, has represented several politically sensitive clients, including one of five Chinese feminists who were jailed for planning a protest this spring.
Authorities confiscated Zhuoxuan’s passport — and detained him and his father — in July at Beijing’s international airport as they attempted to leave Australia. Since then, Zhuoxuan has been under constant surveillance, said Bo Liang, a family friend living in San Francisco who had planned to assume custody of the teen once he arrived in the U.S.
“As a mother, I can’t imagine what he had been through,” Bo said.
Tom Malinowski, assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, said U.S. officials raised the issue of Zhuoxuan’s treatment at a meeting this week with Chinese officials.
The U.S. has “welcomed an increasing emphasis on the rule of law in the Chinese government’s discourse,” Malinowski told reporters Friday.
“But when it comes to … politically sensitive issues and politically sensitive cases, legality appears to be a secondary consideration,” he said. “The question that we think China has to answer is whether the rule of law in their conception remains a tool for disciplining society, or whether they intend for it to become a check on the power of the state. And so far, particularly with respect to politically sensitive issues and cases, it appears to be the former.”
On Tuesday, the staterun Global Times newspaper alleged, in a sternly worded editorial, that “foreign anti-China forces” lured Zhuoxuan out of the country.
In another editorial Thursday, the newspaper said Western media “hyped” the story to “attract the attention of many people who do not know the truth, which will tarnish China’s image.”
Bo, the family friend, did not buy the newspaper’s narrative.
“Bear in mind, he’s already 16; how could he be cheated so easily?” she said. “I don’t think it’s easy to convince a normal 16-year-old boy to decide to leave. I think he just had the most miserable life in the world.”