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lone and separated from his family, Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng sat strapped to a bench for hours, his bound, stretched legs forced to bend upward as more bricks were added underneath his feet.
It was 2020 and he was in the Xuzhou detention center where, Yu would tell his lawyer later, he had grown too weak to chew his food or hold a pen in his right hand. While he was there, his wife, who had been campaigning for him outside prison, was being repeatedly interrogated and surveilled; at one point she was even put in temporary detention.
Yu was released in 2022 after completing his four-year sentence for “inciting subversion for state power.” But last year, Yu found himself behind bars and undergoing another sham trial, this time with his wife, Xu Yan.
According to Human Rights Watch, Xu has lost 14 kilograms since being detained and has been subjected to verbal abuse, including being told by police that her and Yu’s son would face arrest should he start a campaign for them. Similar to what Yu had gone through during his previous detention, the couple also experienced long periods of having no access to their lawyers and to their family.
But for Yu and Xu, the physical and psychological torment is only half the story.
Outside the prison walls, their teenage son has been enduring his own form of punishment – a pattern that rights groups say has become increasingly familiar in China’s brutal and indiscriminate campaign against human rights defenders and their families.
The toll of this dual persecution became devastatingly clear last year when Yu and Xu’s then 18-year-old son attempted suicide, overwhelmed not only by the trauma of having both his parents behind bars, but also by relentless police surveillance. Though emergency medical intervention saved his life, the incident starkly illustrates what the human rights group Sentinel Defenders Network described as “judicial extermination of their family.”
Now, in a fresh blow to the Yu family, the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court has sentenced Yu Wensheng to three years in prison, and Xu Yan to one year and nine months, both for “incitement to subvert state power.”
It’s unclear how the ruling will affect their son, who had been reported to be experiencing a “serious deterioration” in his mental health as he waited to hear what was happening to his parents, while Chinese authorities continued to harass him and curtail his movements.
Targeting a sensitive spot
The Yu family’s ordeal is not an isolated case but part of a systematic pattern. For the past several years, U.N. experts and rights advocates have been noting how Chinese authorities have not only deliberately gone after human rights lawyers and thrown them in jail, but also ensured that their loved ones would have little peace.
In a letter to the Chinese government dated Feb. 14, 2024, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Margaret Satterthwaite observed that the relatives – “including underage children” – of imprisoned human rights lawyers suffer “deleterious consequences,” such as “eviction, the obligation to move numerous times under duress, constant threats and repeated cuts to their gas and electricity supply; and pressure on schools to not allow the children of these families to register, leading to a violation of the right to education of lawyers’ children.”
Four years earlier, a U.N. news article had also reported U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Mary Lawlor as saying that human rights lawyers in China were being “charged, detained, disappeared and tortured,” and their families “harassed, threatened, summoned for questioning and subjected to surveillance by the authorities.”
An April 2024 report by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) meanwhile documents how Chinese authorities have been deliberately targeting children of rights defenders – from infants to teenagers – detaining them in psychiatric wards or orphanages, forcing them to drop out of school, and preventing them from studying abroad through exit bans.
According to the report, the families are harassed even after the rights defenders’ release from jail. Among the cases it cites is that of lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who was released from prison in 2020, and whose family has been harassed by authorities with sudden raids on homes of friends who give them shelter, forced evictions, and constant police surveillance.
Wang’s son, who should have already reached sixth grade by now, has been continually forced out of school. Wang said that his son is now showing signs of psychological trauma.
The report includes as well the experience of Yu Wengsheng’s family. It points out that the risks to the physical and psychological well-being of the incarcerated couple’s son remain “high” after his most recent suicide attempt, “reflecting the lifelong damage done to him and many others, who started enduring such treatment at a young age.”
“His mental health status is still unaddressed as he lives alone under police monitoring,” it adds.
Access to neither counsel nor family
In January 2018, when Yu was arrested outside his Beijing home for “obstructing official duties,” his son had been with him as he was taking the boy to school.
Just a day earlier, Yu had published a bold open letter (penned months back) that demanded Chinese President Xi Jinping’s dismissal from office, political reforms, fair elections, and stricter oversight of the Chinese Communist Party.
While in detention, Yu not only endured torture-like conditions, but was also barred for over a year from meeting his lawyers. He was placed as well into residential surveillance in a designated location (RSDL). The RSDL system, legal under China’s Criminal Procedure Law, allows individuals accused of “endangering national security” to be detained in undisclosed locations for up to six months without access to legal counsel or contact with family.
The CHRD report highlights how such a tactic has become standard practice in China’s persecution of rights defenders and their families. Such restricted access also often indicates torture is taking place behind detention facility walls, the report says.
In her February 2024 letter to Beijing, U.N. Special Rapporteur Satterthwaite had remarked: “Without access to legal counsel or their families, those placed under RSDL are at increased risk of all forms of cruel and inhuman treatment, including torture. In some circumstances, secret incommunicado detention can itself amount to torture or other forms of ill-treatment.”
A year into his detention, authorities – without informing his lawyers – subjected Yu to a secret trial with no independent observers, violating his right to a fair trial. His wife was informed of his conviction in June 2020 through a call on the same day.
Yet the brutal treatment he endured in prison did not deter Yu from his rights advocacy. After his release in 2022, Yu continued to speak out against rights violations. In an April 2023 post on X, he publicly condemned the sentencing of prominent human rights lawyers and activists Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi.
Days after he posted his statement, Yu and his wife were formally arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “inciting subversion of state power,” respectively.
What followed appears to be Both suffered a repeat of Yu’s first ordeal: obstructing their access to lawyers, secret and closed-door trials, and this time, in the case of in Yu’s case, the recycling of previously prosecuted evidence.
Perseverance despite persecution
To the global rights and justice non-profit Sentinel Defenders Network, the charges against Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan, along with the secret trials, violate both Chinese and international laws and conventions bypassing rights to due process and free speech.
“Certainly, if a lawyer can be detained for free speech, all lawyers are at risk,” the group said. “Other patterns of harassment include suspension of licenses, travel bans, and restrictions on domestic social media.”
“There will likely be a long, dark period for human rights lawyers (in China),” it also said.
To many observers, Beijing’s strategy is clear: By making the personal cost unbearably high, authorities hope to deter the next generation of rights defenders from following in the footsteps of lawyers like Yu.
Aside from Yu, several other lawyers and rights defenders have been forcibly silenced by Beijing over the years through vague sweeping charges, echoing the infamous “709 crackdown” in 2015 when hundreds of activists were detained and slapped with charges en masse.
This had led U.N. Special Rapporteur Lawlor to say, “Since the so-called ‘709 crackdown’ began on 9 July July 9, 2015, the profession of human rights lawyer has been effectively criminalized in China.”
Yet Yu has also shown that one can remain true to one’s conviction even under extreme duress, and has repeatedly stood up to defend rights through the years despite knowing the probable harsh consequences.
In October 2014, Yu endured 99 days of detention, including 61 days in a death-row cell and nearly 200 interrogations, after organizing a protest supporting the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.
In 2015, he defended fellow lawyers during the 709 Crackdown and publicly accused the government of conducting illegal arrests – a rare act of defiance. For this action, Yu was arbitrarily detained for 24 hours.
“There must be some people making a sacrifice, to pave the way for future generations,” Yu once told the International Service for Human Rights, explaining his decision to stay in China despite mounting risks. “Since I have gone so far, I have no return, I don’t want to step back. So let me keep going, till genuine democracy and freedom reach China.” ◉
