Jailed Dissident Yang Maodong Finally Allowed Access to Lawyer

Posted: November 15, 2013 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Law & Justice | Tags: China, China Digital Times, Chinese law, Chris Buckley, Guangdong, Guangzhou, Guo Feixiong, New York Times, Yang, Yang Maodong |1 Comment

Credit: frontlinedefenders.org

Buckley reports from China for The New York Times that writer and activist Yang Maodong has finally been allowed access to a lawyer, three months after his detention and two after his formal arrest.

Yang Maodong, a writer and businessman better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, was detained by the police in Guangzhou, in Guangdong Province, in early August on allegations of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” He is one of several well-known rights advocates held on similar accusations after participating in grass-roots campaigns pressing the Communist Party for stronger legal and political rights.

Until now, Mr. Yang has not been allowed to see a lawyer, which his lawyers and supporters have said is a blatant violation of Chinese law. Mr. Yang’s lack of access to visitors prompted speculation from some of his supporters that he was ill, had been physically abused or was on a hunger strike.

Mr. Yang told a lawyer who was allowed to visit him, Chen Guangwu, that days after he was detained, he began to refuse to eat food, accepting for 25 days only glucose drinks and a nutritional intravenous drip. Mr. Chen declined to talk about the meeting. The account of it was given by Mr. Yang’s other lawyer, Sui Muqing, who said the police had excluded him from the meeting. [Source]

Human Rights Watch’s Maya Wang explained last month how a loophole in the revised Criminal Procedural Law has been used to deny Yang access to lawyers.

Source: China Digital Times, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy.

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