Safeguard Defenders, an international human rights organization, released a new report on January 26 revealing the Chinese government’s practice of pseudo-release of dissidents and human rights lawyers.
According to the report, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was released in April 2020 after nearly five years of disappearance by the Chinese government, but he was not freed. He was first placed under house arrest at his Home in Jinan and then relocated to other parts of the city until three weeks later, when he was allowed to return to his home in Beijing to be reunited with his wife and children.
The report notes that “pseudo-release” is when a prisoner is released and then placed under house arrest in a home, hotel or other secret location, where the victim is kept under strict police guard, with no freedom to leave the residence, no contact with friends and Family, and controlled access to medical care for weeks, months or years.
This practice has become standard police practice for released activists and human rights lawyers. Other prominent human rights lawyers who have been subjected to such detentions include Zhisheng Gao and Jiang Tianyong. Among them is Zhisheng Gao, who has been falsely released for six years and whose whereabouts are still unknown.
The report emphasizes that this practice violates Article 37 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China on the protection of personal freedom of citizens, the most serious of which is total disappearance, which is equivalent to enforced disappearance as defined by the UN Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
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