The 709 Crackdown ( or 709案 '709 Case' for short) was a nationwide crackdown on
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
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, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...
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
Li Heping () is a civil rights lawyer in the People's Republic of China and a partner of the Beijing Global Law Firm who was abducted on 10 July 2015. He is a prominent figure in China's Weiquan (rights defending) movement, having defended under ...
, 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
Wang Quanzhang (, born 15 February 1976) is a Chinese human rights lawyer from Wulian County, Shandong. He was arrested in August 2015 as part of the "709 crackdown" on human rights lawyers instigated by General Secretary of the Communist Part ...
, 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
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...
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
Inciting subversion of state power () is a crime under the law of the People's Republic of China. It is article 105, paragraph 2 of the 1997 revision of the People's Republic of China's Penal Code.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 ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...
in January 2018.
On 17 June 2020, according to a report from Deutsche Welle,
Yu Wensheng
Yu Wensheng (, born November 11, 1967) is a Chinese human rights lawyer based in Beijing. He is known for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and taking up politically sensitive cases against the government.
Arrest
In 2014, Yu was detain ...
, who had defended Wang Quanzhang and publicly called for the removal of Xi 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.
See also
*
Human rights in China
Human rights in mainland China are periodically reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), on which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and various foreign governments an ...
*
List of Chinese dissidents
This list consists of activists who are known as Chinese dissidents. The label is primarily applied to intellectuals who "push the boundaries" of society or criticize the policies of the government. Examples of the former include Wei Hui and J ...
*
Xu Zhangrun
Xu Zhangrun (; born October 1962) is a Chinese jurist. He was a professor of Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and a research fellow with the Unirule Institute of Economics. His dissident writing having prev ...