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China Bars Human Rights Lawyer From Seeing Wife Upon Jail Release Amid
Coronavirus Pandemic

Verna Yu

   HONG KONG - A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who had been jailed
   for 4 ½ years for subversion was released Sunday, but his wife and
   rights groups fear the authorities are using the coronavirus pandemic
   as a pretext to continue holding him under de facto house arrest.

   Wang Quanzhang, a lawyer who had defended political activists and
   members of the banned Falun Gong sect, was barred from reuniting with
   his wife and son in Beijing amid the coronavirus pandemic, his wife, Li
   Wenzu, said. Instead, authorities have taken him to his hometown,
   Jinan, in the eastern province of Shandong, 400 km south of Beijing,
   for a compulsory period of quarantine of 14 days, she said.

   Li, who has been frequently harassed and followed by the authorities
   throughout Wang's incarceration, worries that officials will hold him
   under effective house arrest for a long period, as they have with other
   dissident lawyers and activists over the years.

   In recent months, Chinese authorities have also have been using
   compulsory quarantine as a pretext to restrict the movements of
   government critics.

   Wang called his wife Saturday, telling her not to meet him at the
   prison. In a recording she posted on Twitter, Wang said he wouldn't see
   her in Beijing but had to be quarantined "for some time" due to the
   pandemic. He said, "We'll be back together, but there'll be a process."

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