Latest: Chinese human rights lawyer #YuWensheng has spent more than 1000 days in Chinese detention, and his wife @xuyan709 told me that his lawyer found out one of his tooth has fallen out while the others were loose when he visited Yu this week. williamyang-35700.medium.com/chinese-lawyer…
"On October 13, one of his defense lawyers, Lin Chihlei, visited him for two hours. According to his wife Xu Yan, the lawyer realized that Yu’s health conditions had further deteriorated since his last lawyer’s visit in August."
“Yu lost a tooth on the upper right side of his mouth while teeth on his left side began to get loose, making him unable to chew food properly,” Xu said. “He began to have difficulty eating and he applied for dental checkup several times.
However, the detention center hasn’t agreed to any of his requests yet. Such behavior is illegal.”
Apart from having difficulty eating, Xu said the injury on Yu’s right arm has further deteriorated as well. And since the detention center refused to offer Yu warm water, he has been coughing for more than 20 days.
On top of that, Yu began to experience stiffness in his body while he sat on a bench, so Yu has been refusing to sit on a bench. “It’s not difficult for the detention center to offer Yu warm water, and...
... why wouldn’t they allow Yu to visit the doctors when he has been showing signs of sickness?” asked Yu’s wife.
“His health conditions have further deteriorated and I suspect whether the detention center is intentionally depriving Yu of his rights to visit doctors, causing his health to further deteriorate.”
The lawyer also told Xu that food offered by the detention center was not good, and Yu experienced starvation for several months. Xu worries that as Yu couldn’t chew food normally and meals at the detention center was bad, Yu’s health conditions will continue to deteriorate.
“I requested the court to let Yu go to the doctors on bail in August, bu the court rejected my application,” Xu said. “Now Yu still can’t get the treatment that he needs and I don’t think the court will allow him to go visit doctors on bail in the future.”
Xu Yan also said Yu’s defense lawyers faced some interference from the court while trying to access and copy legal documents for his case. On October 12, Yu’s lawyer Lu Siwei tried to copy disks containing legal documents of his case,...
...but since the court didn’t allow him to keep copying the disks during lunch hours and after 5 p.m., he was only able to copy 33 out of 87 disks.
Xu thinks the Jiangsu Provincial High Court’s decision not to extend the hours for Yu’s lawyers to copy the legal documents is a way for them to delay the progress of Yu’s case.
“The defense lawyers need to copy these legal documents so they can write the defense for Yu,” Xu explained. “We demanded the Jiangsu Provincial High Court to make the second trial public, but I don’t think the court is going to agree to them.
After all, they handed down Yu’s sentences in a secret trial earlier this year.”
During the same week, Xu Yan and the wife of another detained Chinese human rights lawyer met foreign diplomats from six countries, including the United States, the European Union, Canada, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Additionally, on October 12, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders published the content of a Joint Allegation letter that they sent to the Chinese government in August.
They expressed concerns about the imprisonment of Yu Wensheng as well as the broader pattern of the Chinese government’s growing restrictions on freedom of expression in China. “To date, no response has been received to the communication,” the Special Rapporteur wrote.
Xu Yan said since his detention in early 2018, Xu and her son had only been able to briefly talk to Yu through a video call for five minutes once. She hasn’t been allowed to meet him at the detention center since then, and the government also hasn’t allowed Yu to call or write.
“All the letters that I sent to Yu have been returned and they also haven’t allowed him to write to me. The Chinese government is trying to separate my family and this is completely illegal. I will try to keep asking to meet him but I don’t think they will allow it to happen.”
Mandarin version of the story by me: dw.com/zh/%E4%BD%99%E…
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