Xu Zhiyong, a prominent young Chinese jurist, constitutionalist scholar and founder of the New Citizen movement, was arrested by the Chinese communist party for attending a private party in Xiamen late last year and urging President Xi Jinping to step down. His girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, has also been persecuted by authorities. Li Yong, Li’s father, sent a letter to police on Dec 30 declaring the application invalid after he had written it under threat of police deception and found that the police had lied.
Li Qiaochu posted on Twitter today a letter from his father, Li Yong, to the director of the Haidian branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. The letter revealed that on the afternoon of November 26 this year, an unnamed police officer threatened Li With possible imprisonment and asked Li Yong to write an application according to his claims, requesting the police to release Li.
The police asked Li yong to admit in his application that he did not supervise Li While she was on bail, allowing her to have contact with “illegal persons,” and to ensure that her daughter lived with her parents, monitored her mobile phone and computer, prevented her from Posting statements “detrimental to the national interest and illegal activities,” and prohibited her from having contact with “illegal persons.”
Although Li yong did not think his daughter would come into contact with “lawbreakers”, the police said that once he wrote, he would let her go home to save her heart, and that Li yong complied with the police’s request and wrote an application.
But after Li yong finished writing, Li Was still interrogated for 12 consecutive hours. When the daughter was taken home and kept under strict supervision, the police still kept harassing her and often took Li away for “interviews”.
Li said he was deeply grieved and that his application was meaningless. He declared it invalid and asked the police to return Li’s legal documents and illegally seized items.
Li Qiaochu, Xu’s girlfriend, was also arrested by authorities after Xu’s arrest in February and held for several months in a “designated prison”.
After he was released on bail in June, Li continued to be monitored and harassed by police and barred from having much contact with the outside world. On November 26 this year, he was interviewed by the Beijing police again. After his father wrote the application, his parents took it back to his home the next morning.
Mr Xu’s arrest is believed to be related to a private gathering in xiamen in early December where participants discussed current politics and China’s future and shared their experience in promoting civil society. On December 26 of the same year, many participants of the party were suddenly arrested by shandong provincial police across the province. Subsequently, lawyers and citizens were detained and summoned across the country on a large scale, leading to the flight of many citizens and lawyers, including Xu Zhiyong. The arrest is known as the citizen 1226 case.
In early February, xu issued a “letter of resignation” while on the run, sharply criticizing Xi for his incompetence in the face of the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan and the “anti-China” campaign in Hong Kong, urging him to step down.
Mr Xu was arrested in Guangzhou on February 15. On June 20, Xu’s second sister received a phone call from shandong police, informing them that Xu had been approved for arrest.
Mr Ding and Chang Weiping, a human rights lawyer who attended the party, were also arrested and detained by the authorities, tortured and their friends and relatives monitored and suppressed by the authorities.
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