On 12 January 2017, 44-year-old lawyer Li Chunfu was released on bail, after a detention of nearly 18 months. Li Chunfu is the younger brother of Li Heping, another prominent human rights attorney who was arrested on 10 July 2015 (one month before Li Chunfu was arrested). When Li Chunfu’s wife, Bi Liping, saw him at the police station on January 12th, she saw a man “as thin as sticks” with eyes “that were pale and lifeless”.
Li Chunfu was arrested on 1 August 2015, placed under residential surveillance. In January 2016 he was formally accused of “subversion of state power”. He was now released on bail to await the hearing of his trial.
Shortly after his release, Li Chunfu was admitted to hospital because he showed symptoms of schizophrenia. Li’s family members said he had been placed under residential surveillance for six months. This allegedly means that he had been tortured in a secret prison for six months.
Li Chunfu is from a poor family from the Henan province and had left school early in order to work in factories. Eventually he became a lawyer by self-study in 2005 and he chose to work on human rights cases. According to his sister-in-law, Li attached importance to every case he ever worked on. Li represented 200 miners from Hebei and also members of the Falungong.
