Chinese human rights lawyer Chang Wei-ping (Photo source: Twitter screenshot)
According to Apple Daily, Chen Zijuan said her lawyer received a phone call from the State Security on the 8th, asking him about the letter he wrote to Chang Weiping, during which the State Security revealed that Chang had been arrested.
Chen Zijuan said she hadn’t received the notice by yesterday afternoon, so she didn’t know whether her husband’s crime would be “inciting subversion of state power” or the more serious “subversion of state power”. The lawyer told her that after the arrest, Chang Wei-ping will be sent to the detention center, but can not meet, or pending the decision of the authorities, generally until the actual prosecution to allow family members to meet.
Chang Wei-ping, 36, has long been involved in human rights and public interest cases; in December 2019, he met with several human rights lawyers and dissidents in Xiamen to discuss the future of civil society and current affairs in China, and was placed under residential surveillance in January of the following year on suspicion of “subversion of state power” before being released on bail. In October last year, he posted a short video in which he revealed that he had been tortured while under surveillance, including being deprived of sleep and handcuffed to a tiger bench every day. Shortly after the video was released, Chang Wei Ping was arrested again.
Since January this year, Chen Zijuan has broken her silence, campaigned for her husband’s injustice, and sent a letter of complaint to the Shaanxi Provincial Procuratorate, accusing Director Meng Maixu and Deputy Director Xiang Xianhong of the Baoji Public Security Bureau’s High-Tech Branch of ordering or condoning the torture of Chang Wei Ping by their subordinates, and requesting that the Procuratorate retrieve the video of Chang Wei Ping’s detention under residential surveillance in January 2020 and the simultaneous video of 16 interrogation transcripts.
Speaking to Radio Free Asia, Chen Zijuan revealed that authorities have been searching for people who had contact with Chang Wei-ping throughout the country, scouring the transcripts and distorting Chang Wei-ping’s original statements, suspecting that they were induced to accuse Chang Wei-ping. She said, for example, that when Chang Wei-ping simply said, “I’m having trouble with my lawyer’s license,” the police wanted them to testify that Chang had said, “We should all unite against the Communist Party.
Chen Zijuan said, “They are sparing no effort to put Chang Weiping to death, I have to come forward.”
Chen also revealed that officials from Baoji’s National Security Bureau, Public Security Bureau and Shaanxi Provincial Public Security Department have been “lobbying” Chen in Shenzhen since last October. A Shaanxi official called “political commissar” by the Shenzhen police told her on Dec. 23 last year that Chang Wei Ping often does not sleep at night and is involved in anti-China organizations, and after seizing power, he became a minister or provincial party secretary of Shaanxi Province, and Chen Zijuan is the minister’s or provincial party secretary’s wife: “He will say that Chang Wei Ping is not deeply involved The first time he said that Chang Weiping was not deeply involved, there was no big deal. One day he said, Chang Wei Ping on the boat of thieves. He also said, my job is quite good, the average person can not find, to cherish.” “I told them, Chang Wei Ping is wrongly accused, I am willing to pay the price of work.”
Chang’s parents were also summoned several times late last year on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for holding signs protesting the torture and persecution of their son, and were forced to surrender their cell phones. Cameras were installed at the diagonal door of their home in Fengxiang County.
In addition to pressuring Chang Wei-ping’s family, the authorities also forced Zhang Tingyuan and Zhang Keke to withdraw from the case through the Chongqing and Hubei judicial bureaus, respectively.
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