Tom Phillips - 'Freed' Chinese human rights activist Zhao Wei still missing
The mystery
surrounding the fate of a young Chinese activist entangled in a major human
rights crackdown has grown after her husband was unable to locate her despite
police claims she had been freed from detention. Zhao
Wei, a 24-year-old legal assistant, was taken into secret detention in July
2015 at the start of a government offensive against human rights lawyers.
On 7 July this year
police said Zhao, an employee of the prominent
human rights lawyer Li Heping, who was also detained last year but remains
in custody, had
been released on bail as a result of her “confession” to unnamed
offences. Speaking
to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post this week from an unknown
location Zhao claimed she had returned to her family home in Henan province and
“was staying with her parents”.
However, when Zhao’s
husband visited that home in the city of Jiyuan this week he found the
two-storey building deserted. “The doors and windows
were all closed,” You Minglei told the Guardian on Friday. “I knocked for quite
some time but there was nobody there.” A neighbour said the family had not been
home for “a while”. While at the address,
You said he had seen a vehicle with a Beijing number plate parked nearby as
well as a surveillance camera that had been positioned at the entrance to the
narrow street. You voiced doubts over
the “interview” that his wife – who he met while she was a student activist –
had given to the South China Morning
Post in which she claimed she regretted her civil rights work.
“I have come to
realise that I have taken the wrong path,” the newspaper, which did not say how
the interview was set up or conducted, quoted Zhao as saying. “I repent for
what I did. I’m now a brand new person.” You said: “I believe
that Zhao Wei does not have a mobile phone or a computer with her and she would
not have the contact number for the South China Morning Post.” “I think somebody
asked her to do this and to say those things. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense,”
he added. “I still believe the government is controlling everything behind the
scenes.” William Nee, a Hong
Kong-based activist for Amnesty International who is tracking the case, said it
was hard to be certain what had happened to Zhao Wei. However, Nee said
authorities appeared to be “using many of the same abusive tactics that they
have used in other cases in order to silence [critics] such as releasing people
into fake freedom ... [and] harassing and controlling family members.”
Nee said he was
unconvinced by Zhao’s online posts on Weibo, China’s Twitter, in which she
claimed to regret her actions. “It seems highly
likely that her Weibo comments are either being written under coercion or are
scripted by the authorities. To some extent, this is the social media version
of the notorious
forced TV confession,” he said.
Public security
authorities have not responded to inquiries about Zhao Wei’s whereabouts. Calls
to Zhao’s mother’s phone went unanswered on Friday.
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