New | Chinese lawyer held in nationwide rights advocates crackdown released and reunited with family in US
Chen Taihe, 45 – taken away last July on suspicion of ‘inciting subversion of state power’ – back with wife and children on March 1
One of the Chinese lawyers swept up in a nationwide crackdown on rights advocates last year has been released and arrived in the United States last Tuesday, he said this week.
We were working together to promote a jury system. We wouldn’t overthrow the regime – I don’t understand why the government sees us as a threat
Chen Taihe, 45, a lawyer and law professor at Guilin Electronic Technology University Law School, was unsure whether his case indicated any change in official attitude towards people caught up in the unprecedented crackdown in July, but urged the authorities to show clemency to others still detained.
He said by phone that he was reunited with his wife and children in San Francisco on March 1.
Chen, one of about 300 lawyers and rights activists interrogated, detained and harassed by police in the July crackdown, said he and his family were “very lucky”, but he failed to comprehend why Guilin police dropped charges against him and allowed him to leave the country.
“I have no way of judging,” he said, but added that he asked to go to the US to be with his wife, who gave birth in late January.
READ MORE: Chinese rights advocates Wang Yu, Bao Longjun formally arrested on subversion charges
He did not know about their departure until days later, when he came out of detention centre on August 12 and was held at another undisclosed location. He was sent home for “residential surveillance” on August 22.
READ MORE: What China’s crackdown on lawyers says about authorities’ fear of burgeoning rights defence movement
More than a dozen lawyers and legal assistants caught up in the crackdown remain under criminal detention or arrest.
Most have been formally arrested on the charges of “subversion of state power” or “inciting subversion of state power”. Many others remain under police surveillance, some of them and their families are barred from leaving the country, while others are summoned by police from time to time.
Chen said while in custody, he was repeatedly questioned about his push for a jury system in China and his connections with other rights lawyers, including Wang Yu and Li Heping, who have both worked on cases with Chen and now charged with “subversion of state power”. They have both been detained for eight months.
READ MORE: Convicted Chinese human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang to be released soon, but he remains far from free
Chen said police did not torture him in custody, but he was placed in harsh conditions with death row inmates and was barred from seeing his lawyer.
He believed he was the first person caught up in the crackdown to be allowed out of the country and urged the authorities to similarly give “humane and lenient treatment” to other legal advocates.
“We were working together to promote a jury system,” he said. “We wouldn’t overthrow the regime – I don’t understand why the government sees us as a threat.”
Chen said he had travelled to the US on a visa originally intended for a visiting scholarship at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific in California, which he was supposed to have taken up in late July.
Chen said he was grateful to US-based advocacy group Dui Hua Foundation, which had worked with Chinese and US officials to secure his release.
