China released a prominent human rights lawyer on bail amid protests today outside a northern city court, where supporters of other jailed lawyers and activists condemned the secrecy surrounding the government's yearlong campaign against legal activism.
The release of Wang Yu, who was detained last July, coincided with videos of an alleged confession by Wang posted on the websites of two Hong Kong media outlets in which she renounced her legal work and said "foreign forces" were using her law firm to undermine and discredit the Chinese government.
Wang's Beijing-based firm, Fengrui, has been at the center of a vast case in which dozens of lawyers and activists have been detained, questioned or charged with subversion since July last year.
Wen Donghai, a lawyer for Wang, told The Associated Press today that he had learned from media reports that Wang had been released but had not seen her. Li Yuhan, another lawyer representing Wang, said Wang's mother did not know of her release.
The AP could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos, and Phoenix TV, one of the outlets that interviewed Wang, declined to disclose where and when the interview took place.
Wang's reported release and confession were an unexpected bombshell for China's small but burgeoning human rights community on a day when many believed the head of the Fengrui firm, Zhou Shifeng, and three activists were standing trial behind closed doors in northern China.
Flanked by Western diplomats, around two dozen supporters gathered outside the Tianjin No 2 Intermediate People's Court calling for information to be disclosed about the four, who were indicted in mid-July.
Supporters included the wife of Gou Hongguo, one of the activists who was charged with subversion and thought to be standing trial today, even though there were no visible signs of a trial in progress aside from a heavy presence of plainclothes security officers outside the courthouse.
Court officials reached by phone said they had no information about the cases.
Several hundred people nationwide have been questioned, with some detained and arrested, in the crackdown that has sent a chill through China's legal system. Nearly two dozen people remain in detention and face charges, the most serious of which include subversion of state power, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
In her video interview, Wang denounced Zhou, the law firm's head, as an unqualified lawyer and said all of the firm's lawyers had received training in how to use Western universal values, human rights and democracy to "attack and smear" the Chinese government.
She accused unidentified foreign powers of hatching a plot to smuggle her 16-year-old son to the United States and denounced the American Bar Association for awarding her its newly created "ABA International Human Rights Award." "Regarding this award, my attitude is to not recognise it, identify with it or accept it.
This award is just another way for them to use me to attack and smear the Chinese government," said Wang, who was seated in a garden at what appeared to be a western-style villa.
