Lawyers for Lawyers, together with 17 other signatories, urged the Chinese authorities to release lawyer Yu Wensheng and offer a compensation for the rights violations he has been subjected to during his detainment in a joint statement.
Human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who was the defence lawyer of 709 Crackdown victim lawyer Wang Quanzhang, has already been sentenced to four years in prison and has been deprived of his political rights for three years for “inciting subversion of state power”. Wensheng was arrested on 19 January 20218. He went through a secret trial back in May 2019 and neither his family nor his defence lawyers had been informed in advance of any hearing, and were only notified of the outcome afterwards.
Yu Wensheng was the recipient of the Franco-German Human rights and the Rule of Law Prize in January 2019, which his wife Xu Yan, who has been working hard in defending the rights of her husband, accepted the award on his behalf. It is deemed that lawyer Yu was deprived of a fair judicial procedure, and the secret trial severely violated the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law, the Chinese Constitution and international human rights standards.
In the joint statement, the signatories call on the Chinese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Lawyer Yu Wensheng, offer him corresponding and appropriate compensation for the rights violations and stop all forms of suppression on the family of Yu Wensheng. Moreover, the signed parties call on the international community, the public and the media to strongly condemn the lack of due process, and the rights violation that lawyer Yu Wensheng has been through as a result of the secret trial, detention and verdict that the Chinese Court has subjected him to.
