The 709 Crackdown ( or 709案 '709 Case' for short) was a nationwide crackdown on Chinese lawyers and human rights activists instigated during the summer of 2015. It is known as the "709 crackdown" as it started on 9 July 2015. Yaqiu Wang of

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...

commented that "the 709 crackdown dealt a terrible blow to China's rights-defense movement, which significantly contracted as rights lawyers were jailed, disbarred or placed under surveillance".

Targets

More than 300 people were detained as part of the 2015 crackdown. Some of the notable people affected by the crackdown are listed below. * Li Heping, former human rights lawyer who was abducted in 2015. He was then given a suspended jail term in April 2017, and released in May 2017. * Wang Quanzhang, arrested in August 2015, stood trial from December 2018 to January 2019, sentenced to 4.5 years imprisonment for subversion of state power, and released from prison on 4 April 2020. Moved by authorities to his former residence in Jinan for two-week

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isolation period; his wife believes the government used the epidemic as an excuse to keep him under house arrest. * Wang Yu, lawyer charged with inciting subversion of state power, but released on bail in 2016. * Wu Gan, human rights activist known as the "Super Vulgar Butcher", who was sentenced to eight years in December 2017. * Xiang Li, activist forbidden from leaving China during the crackdown, but who was smuggled out of China to

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

in January 2018. On 17 June 2020, according to a report from Deutsche Welle, Yu Wensheng, who had defended Wang Quanzhang and publicly called for the removal of

General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party The general secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party ( zh, s=中国共产党中央委员会总书记, p=Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Wěiyuánhuì Zǒngshūjì) is the leader of the Chinese Communist Part ...

Xi Jinping Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...

as well as for reforms in the legal and political systems, was sentenced to four years in prison and deprived of political rights for three years.

References

{{Portal bar, China Chinese dissidents Chinese human rights activists Chinese lawyers Chinese prisoners and detainees Political controversies in China Political repression in China Torture in China

Targets

See also

References