Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) Profile picture
Professor Emeritus @NYULaw & Founder of @USALINYU; Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asia @CFR_org. Twitter maintained by colleagues. Views = mine. RT≠endorsement.

Apr 27, 2020, 6 tweets

(1/X) It is indeed great news that #WangQuanzhang has finally been allowed to return to Beijing and his family. Many who supported him and his human rights cause for five years will be moved by the video of the family reunion.

(2/X) The significance of Wang’s release from "non-release release" (NRR) in Jinan after a week of the Party’s uncertain waffling in the unusual glare of foreign media has yet to be determined, of course. What are the conditions, if any, of his return to Beijing?

(3/X) Did his dynamic, gallant wife @709liwenzu manage to resist the usual pressures to keep the ex-prisoner at home cut off from the world? Was her illness and hospital trip the straw that broke the Party’s back?

(4/X) Will Wang, having already had unusual access to people & media in Jinan, continue to have such access? The Party may decide it’s too late to lock the barn door. Will he now be freer to tell the full story of the cruelty inflicted upon him by the Party’s criminal justice?

(5/X) Might this case indicate recognition by the Party that the police should not have unlimited discretion in determining the scope of post-conviction “deprivation of political rights” (DPR)? After all, as the Soviet origins of this largely unrecognized punishment demonstrate..

(6/6) ... “deprivation of political rights” was thought by many merely to deprive an ex-convict of the rights to vote and stand for election, not an enormous deprivation given the realities of Communist politics.

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