No end to China's crackdown in dissent despite coronavirus crisis: Rights activists
19 February, 2020
Police in China possess arrested a prominent activist who was simply a fugitive for weeks and criticised president Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus epidemic while found in hiding, a privileges group said Tuesday.
Anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong was arrested on the subject of Saturday after being on the run since December, according to Amnesty International. A origin who spoke to AFP on the health of anonymity, stated Xu had been arrested in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou.
Guangzhou police didn't respond to requests for comment.
Xu went into hiding after authorities broke up a December gathering of intellectuals discussing political reform in the eastern coastal town of Xiamen in Fujian province, ahead of the coronavirus crisis.
China's ruling Communist Party features curtailed civil liberties since Xi took vitality found in 2012, rounding up rights attorneys, labour activists and even Marxist learners.
The death this month of a whistleblowing doctor who was simply reprimanded by police for raising alarm about the deadly new virus before dying of it himself triggered rare calls for political reform and freedom of speech.
The "Chinese government's challenge against the coronavirus has in no way diverted it from its ongoing general campaign to crush all dissenting voices," said Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty International, within an emailed statement.
Over a dozen attorneys and activists were detained or disappeared following the Xiamen gathering, according to rights groupings -- and Xu's detention appears associated with his occurrence at the getting together with, explained Poon.
But while away from home, Xu continued to create information on Twitter about rights issues.
On February 4 Xu released articles calling on Xi to step down and criticised his leadership across a variety of issues like the US-China trade war, Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests and the coronavirus epidemic, which includes now killed practically 1,900 people.
"Medical supplies are restricted, hospitals are filled up with patients, and a sizable number of infected people haven't any way to come to be diagnosed," he wrote. "It's chaos."
"The coronavirus outbreak shows just how important ideals like freedom of expression and transparency will be -- the exact ideals that Xu has longer advocated," Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Man Rights See, told AFP.
But the disappearance of Xu illustrates the way the Chinese talk about "persists in its old techniques" by "silencing its critics", she said.
Xu -- who founded a good movement calling for greater transparency among high-ranking officials -- previously served a good four-calendar year prison sentence from 2013 to 2017 for organising an "illegal gathering".
"That he was a good fugitive for so a number of days while continuing to speak out, that alone was... a kind of task to (Chinese authorities)," explained Hua Ze, a long-time friend of Xu who advised AFP she lost contact with the Chinese activist on Saturday morning.
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