The @hrw_chinese team reviewed the list of Chinese activists, human rights lawyers and citizen journalists who will be tried, sentenced or convicted during this year's Christmas and New Year holiday. hrw.org/news/2020/12/2…
Since the beginning of December 2020, the authorities have carried out new detentions of journalists and activists without providing any credible information to suggest that these individuals have committed legally recognizable offenses.
"“The Chinese government seems to have learned nothing from its information crackdown after the outbreak of Covid-19,” said @Yaqiu. “Detaining journalists and activists won’t make China’s very real problems disappear.”
On December 3, police in Zhuzhou, Hunan province detained activist @oubiaofeng, 40, accusing him of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” under article 293 of China’s penal code. Conviction carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Ou has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese government and recently voiced his support of Dong Yaoqiong, who was kept in a psychiatric hospital for over a year after she splashed ink on a poster of President Xi Jinping in 2018.
On December 7, Beijing authorities detained Haze Fan, a journalist for the Bloomberg News bureau in Beijing, on suspicion of endangering national security.
On December 16, the Beijing police detained Du Bin, 48, a journalist who worked as a freelance photographer for the New York Times, on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
On December 28 a Shanghai court is scheduled to try Zhang Zhan, 37, a citizen journalist, on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Shanghai police detained Zhang in May, after she went to Wuhan in February to report on the coronavirus outbreak.
The whereabouts of Fang Bin, a Wuhan businessman who was detained in February for posting videos of city hospitals, has not been revealed. It is also unclear whether he has been charged. Chen Qiushi, a citizen journalist who was detained in February...
... after he had gone to Wuhan to report on the coronavirus situation, has been released to his parents’ home and placed under close surveillance.
Chen Mei and Cai Wei, detained in April for archiving censored information related to the coronavirus, are being held in a detention center in Beijing awaiting trial for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
The authorities should also unconditionally release and drop any charges against the activists detained since December 2019 for participating in a private gathering on human rights in Fujian province. In what has become known as the “12.26” crackdown,...
... police across the country began to detain people who were at a December 7 and 8 gathering in the city of Xiamen, where they discussed human rights and China’s political future.
“The slew of detentions of those who speak out will only further impede the flow of information about the situation in China,” Wang said. “Governments around the world should press Beijing to release wrongfully detained journalists and activists immediately.”
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