ICC Note:
An article by the Washington Post (WP) notes the deteriorating state of human rights in China as evidenced by the case of Li Chunfu, a Christian human rights lawyer. Li was kept in secret detention where he was tortured and drugged for 500 days. Now, after his release, it is evident that significant psychological damage has been done to him, to the point that WP referred to him as “broken.” But his case was just one of nearly 300 advocates that were detained at the same time showing a growing trend of the crushing of human rights in China. Two days after Li’s release Zhou Qiang, chief justice of the Supreme Court, said of human rights defenders, “One needs to have a clear-cut stand and dare to show the sword against them, to struggle against any erroneous words and actions that deny the leadership of the Communist Party, or slander the rule of law and the judicial system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” China has been removing, brick by brick, every defense that Christians and human and religious rights defenders have in the Chinese legal system against illegal detention and torture.
1/24/2017 China (Washington Post) – For 500 days, Li Chunfu, once a lively and tough human rights lawyer, was kept in secret detention by China’s Communist Party. When he was finally released on Jan. 12, his wife was so shocked she could hardly believe her eyes.
Her 44-year-old husband was a thin, pale and sick man, Bi Liping said, a fearful and paranoid person who seemed to have been broken by the system.
A Beijing hospital soon gave him a tentative diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Li was one of 300 lawyers and advocates who were rounded up in a crackdown in July 2015. Most were soon released, but two have been sentenced and four remain in detention.
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