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Released Chinese Lawyer Barred from Returning Home after Quarantine Period
Ends

Verna Yu

   HONG KONG - A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who was released
   two weeks ago after spending 4 ½ years in prison for subversion has
   been prohibited from reuniting with his family for the second time,
   after a 14-day quarantine period amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

   Wang Quanzhang's wife and rights groups fear the authorities are using
   the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to continue holding him
   indefinitely under de facto house arrest, as has happened to many
   Chinese right activists who completed their prison terms.

   Wang, a lawyer who had defended political activists and members of the
   banned Falun Gong sect, was released April 4 but was barred from
   returning home by the authorities, who took him to his hometown, Jinan,
   in the eastern province of Shandong, 400 kilometers south of Beijing,
   for compulsory quarantine.

   The authorities told him upon his release that he would be freed after
   14 days of quarantine. However, on Sunday, the day he should be free to
   go home, Wang was still barred from returning to Beijing, where his
   wife and 7-year-old son live, his wife, Li Wenzu, said.

   She said Wang told her by phone Saturday that he was unable to come
   home because he had "just come out and needed to get used to
   [everything]." She questioned whether he was speaking of his free will.

   "Did this really come from him?" she asked, "I am shocked, they said
   he'd be freed after 14 days but now his freedom of communications and
   personal freedom continue to be limited."

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