A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer has been detained while walking his child to school, his family says.<\/p>\n
Yu Wensheng, a vocal critic of China’s ruling Communist Party, was seized by about a dozen people, including a Swat team, after he left his flat with his son on Friday morning, his wife said.<\/p>\n
Mr Yu has called for open presidential elections and constitutional reform.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of human rights lawyers have been detained and interrogated by authorities in recent years.<\/p>\n
Hours before his detention,\u00a0Mr Yu criticised China’s leadership and called for political reform in an open letter (in Chinese).<\/a><\/p>\n “Designating the nation’s president, as head of state, through a single party election has no meaning as an election,” he said.<\/p>\n “It has no power to win confidence from the nation, civil society, or the world’s various countries.”<\/p>\n It is not clear where Mr Yu is being held, and local police told the AFP news agency they were not aware of his detention.<\/p>\n His wife, Xu Yan, told Reuters news agency: “I have not received any legal document about his detention and don’t even know what crime he is suspected of committing.”<\/p>\n Mr Yu revealed that his licence to practice law had been revoked earlier this week.<\/a><\/p>\n Officials said he had not been employed by a licensed legal firm in the past six months, but human rights activists alleged that it was the result of his vocal opposition to the ruling Communist Party leadership.<\/p>\n Amnesty International’s China researcher, Patrick Poon, told AFP: “It’s likely retaliation against him for talking to media.”<\/p>\n “I’m worried he might be charged with a serious offence like ‘inciting subversion of state power’ for his words,” he added.<\/p>\n Mr Yu, a former commercial lawyer, has worked on many sensitive cases, including defending other human rights lawyers detained by the government.<\/p>\n He is also part of the team that tried to sue the Chinese government over its failure to improve air quality in the capital, Beijing.<\/p>\n More than 300 lawyers, legal assistants and activists have been questioned, and more than two dozen have been formally investigated since a government-led crackdown that began in 2015.<\/p>\n Some have been sentenced to long jail terms, while others are still awaiting a sentence.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"