Concerns are growing about the health of Xu Zhiyong, China's most prominent imprisoned human rights lawyer, who is believed to have been on hunger strike for almost a month.
Xu, an academic and leading figure in China's embattled civil rights movement, began his hunger strike on October 4. according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an NGO. He is protesting against what he describes as inhumane treatment in prison, including lack of contact with his family and intensive surveillance by other prisoners, according to reports spread through his relatives.
Xu has been detained since February 2020 after attending a chance meeting of lawyers and activists who had met in December 2019 to discuss civil society and current issues. Several of the participants in the meeting were arrested, including Ding Jiaxi, another human rights lawyer whose case was handled with Xu's. The men were convicted of subverting state power. Last year, Xu was sentenced to 14 years and Ding to 12 years, lengthy punishments that the U.N. human rights chief criticized.
This is Xu's second time behind bars. In 2014, he was sentenced to four years in prison for “gathering crowds to disturb public order.”
Xu is the founding father of the New Citizens Movement, a loose collective of academics, lawyers and activists who called for better civil rights and government transparency. The movement has been largely crushed under Xi Jinping, China's leader since 2012, who has repressed civil society.
Since the death of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist who died in 2017 while serving an 11-year prison sentence, Xu is considered by many to be China's most important dissident.
“I would say Xu Zhiyong right now is China's most important living activist,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of Georgetown University's Asian Law Center, who worked with Xu when Xu was a visiting professor of law at the University. from Yale. “His career as a lawyer and activist follows the broader trend of civil society development and then repression under Xi Jinping.”
Maya Wang, deputy China director at Human Rights Watch, said: “Given that this is Xu's second incarceration, he is certainly not new to Chinese prisons and their mistreatment and torture of prisoners. The fact that he is now on a hunger strike probably attests to the harshness and poor treatment he is being given.”
On October 23, Xu was able to speak by phone with an acquaintance. He said he had been unable to contact his partner, Li Qiaochu, an activist recently released from prison. “You must tell Qiaochu and my friends about my hunger strike, otherwise my hunger strike will be in vain. “I will continue to insist until they guarantee the right of communication between Qiaochu and me,” Xu said, according to a statement published by his followers.
Xu's imprisonment and difficulty maintaining contact with the outside world have reduced his fame within China, where he was merienda a well-known figure.
In 2009, charges were brought against him for tax evasion. left supposedly due to a public outcry. But Li Fangping, a human rights lawyer and friend of Xu, said the Chinese government had been effective in silencing Xu's impact. “They want it to disappear completely and no one remembers it,” Li said. “There are many young people and lawyers who have not heard of Xu Zhiyong today.”
Xu is being held in Lunan Prison in Shandong Province. The prison could not be reached for comment.
Additional research by Chi-hui Lin
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