Latest: Chinese human rights lawyer @yuwensheng met his lawyer for the first time in more than 1000 days since he was arrested and detained in January 2018. However, his wife @xuyan709 said Yu developed serious health problems while he was in detention.
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"Yu can't use teeth on his left side to chew food and he also lost one tooth on his right side. His lawyer said his right hand was shaking a lot during the visit and he actually used his left hand to write the complaints in June, which is not the hand he used to use to write."
"Before his arrest, he always used his right hand to write and eat, and he never knew how to write with his left hand." His wife Xu Yan thinks this is a sign that Yu's right hand has suffered from serious injuries and it has been like that for a very long time.
Yu was arrested and forced into disappearance after he published an open letter recommending amendments to the Chinese constitution. After being detained at an unknown location for more than 900 days, his wife was informed in June that he had been sentenced to ...
... four years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power" and he will also be deprived of political rights for three years. However, there was no public record about his sentences, making his wife believe Yu had been given the sentence in a secret trial.
Yu also told his lawyer that he was detained in a room with 20 other guys, and he often couldn't have enough food to eat. Since the Chinese New Year holiday in 2020, he has not received any allowance deposited by his wife.
"I actually tried to mail him the allowance several times since Chinese New Year, but the money was always rejected and returned to me. When I was at the Xuzhou detention center on July 23, I tried to deposit 1000 RMB for him, but he didn't receive that money.
Then I tried to send him 3000 RMB at a post office near the detention center on August 13, and I'm not sure if he has received the money or not. His lawyer told me that he was often forced to remain hungry, which makes me worry that his health condition might worsen."
Even though Yu has filed a complaint against the ruling handed down to him in June, his wife thinks that it might be unlikely for him to change anything even if his complaint was accepted by the court and they decided to open an appeal trial.
His wife thinks he should no longer be detained based on his current health condition, so she submitted an application to the Jiangsu Provincial High Court on Sunday, hoping to let her husband be released on bail. That way, he will be able to treat his injured right hand.
"His right hand is likely to have suffered from a serious injury, and if he remains in detention, the injury could extend to his right arm. I think these scenarios are possible. His health condition is no longer suitable for him to be detained, and he needs to be released ASAP."
Even though his lawyer was able to meet him for the first time in 1000 days, his wife and son still couldn't exercise their visiting rights. In his wife's eyes, the government's decision to prevent the family from being reunited is both illegal and cruel.
Even though she doesn't think the Chinese government will let her family be reunited anytime soon, she vowed to keep fighting for their rights as a family. "The Chinese government has create too much damage to our family by separating us for such a long time," Xu Yan told me.
"I have been asking them to let me and my son to visit my husband based on existing laws, and I will keep doing that."
