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The parents of Chinese lawyer Chang Weiping protest the torture of their son in front of the Gaoxin branch of the Baoji City Public Security Bureau, China, on Dec. 14, 2020. The Epoch Times
Human rights groups have urged the Chinese communist regime to remove travel restrictions on a former attorney following his release from prison on July 8.
Chang Weiping, who is known for representing vulnerable groups in China, was freed after serving three and a half years in prison for the alleged crime of “subversion of state power,” according to a social media post by Amnesty International.
The charge is commonly used by the Chinese communist regime to target activists and human rights campaigners. Mr. Chang was jailed after he publicly detailed incidents of torture.
Although released from prison this week in China’s northern Shaanxi Province, his home province, the CCP sent Mr. Chang to Hainan Island to live under a two-year travel ban.
Safeguard Defenders, a Spain-based human rights organization, called Mr. Chang’s release “another case of #NonReleaseRelease in #China.”
The Human Rights Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit human rights group, expressed concern over Mr. Chang’s health in a July 8 social media post and said the regime “must now lift all restrictions on Chang and ensure he is fully free.”
Mr. Chang was subjected to 10 days of secret detention by Chinese police in January 2020 after attending a meeting in December 2019 with a group of Chinese rights lawyers in Xiamen, Fujian Province, to discuss the legal challenges they faced while practicing law in China. His license to practice law was also revoked by the local authorities.
Ten months after his release, Mr. Chang released a video on YouTube, exposing the physical abuse he suffered during the 10-day detention in a hotel room.
“I was locked in a torture chair in a room of Baoti Hotel for 10 days, 24 hours a day, an extreme form of inflicting pain. The impact on me is that my right hand’s index and ring fingers remain numb, senseless, or functionally abnormal,” the lawyer said in October 2020.
According to former Chinese detainees, a torture chair is colloquially called a “tiger chair” in Chinese, and it involves fastening a detainee’s hands and feet so that he or she is immobilized. The detainee is then denied sleep for hours or days.
Mr. Chang was detained again on Oct. 22, 2020, six days after he posted the video. The video was removed from YouTube but has since been re-uploaded to the platform by other users.
In April 2021, Mr. Chang was formally charged with “subversion of state power.” He was tried and convicted behind closed doors at the Feng County People’s Court, Shaanxi, in July 2022.
He was sentenced to imprisonment for three years and six months in June 2023, according to Amnesty International.
Mr. Chang was released on July 8, after authorities took into consideration the time he had served in detention before his conviction.
His release fell on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the CCP’s massive nationwide arrests of hundreds of human rights lawyers on July 9, 2015, a human rights incident that sparked a global outcry from human rights groups and later became known as the “709 crackdown.”
Frank Yue, Mary Hong, and Li Suo contributed to the report.
