Xi Jinping, China's president, claps during the opening of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference Photo: BLOOMBERG
By Tom
Phillips, Beijing
12 Mar 2015
Human
rights activists have called on Beijing to release five female campaigners who
were detained last weekend after reportedly printing stickers and leaflets
calling for an end to sexual harassment.
Li
Tingting, Wei Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Zheng Churan and Wang Man are understood
to be facing charges of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” that could
land them in prison for up to five years.
The
women were detained on the eve of International Women’s Day on March 8, a date
friends and activists said they had planned to commemorate by plastering public
transport with stickers reading: “Stop sexual harassment, let us stay safe” and
“Go police, go arrest those who committed sexual harassment!”
The
detentions appeared to be “government retaliation” for the women’s activism,
said China Human Rights Defenders, a rights group that estimates around 1,500
Chinese activists have faced some kind of detention over the last two years.
"The
charges against all five women should be dropped and the women immediately and
unconditionally released," William Nee, a Hong Kong-based researcher for
Amnesty International, said on Thursday.
“The
Chinese authorities should be working with these women to address sexual
harassment, not persecuting them.
“It
is chilling that women calling on police to investigate sexual harassment end
up as targets,” added Mr Nee.
“Demanding
that women are not sexually harassed is in no way a criminal act.”
Li
Tingting, a 25-year-old who has campaigned against domestic violence and for
the introduction of unisex lavatories, was taken into custody at around 11.30pm
on March 6, Yan Xin, her lawyer said.
Police
forced their way into her Beijing home, refused to show identification and
produced a blank warrant, he added.
Wang
Qiushi, who represents Wei Tingting, another of the detained activists, said
she had been arrested on March 6 after being summoned to her local police
station.
“She
thought it was just for a routine chat before the 'Two Sessions',” Mr Wang
said, referring to China’s annual parliament that is currently under way in
Beijing.
“But
after that we lost contact with her.” Yan Xin, the lawyer for Li Tingting, said
he had been allowed to visit his client on Thursday morning and found her
“quite optimistic”.
“She
believes that what she has done does not constitute such a crime,” he said.
The
precise motives for this week’s detentions are not clear. However, since coming
to power in late 2012, Xi Jinping, the president, has presided over a broad
offensive against those Beijing views as potential opponents including human
rights lawyers and academics.
Citizens
who have attempted to organise even apparently innocuous gatherings or events
appear to have faced the most severe sanctions.
Over
the last two years authorities have smashed the New Citizens’ Movement, a
network of liberal scholars and lawyers who had met over dinner to discuss
China’s future. Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar who was the group’s leader, was
jailed for four years in January last year while another of its founders was
forced into overseas exile.
In
a “manifesto” read at his trial, Mr Xu argued that Beijing would face a popular
uprising unless it abandoned the “unscrupulous and barbaric” politics of
one-party rule and started a “peaceful transition to democracy”.
Additional
reporting Ailin Tang
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