Opinion | China should not use the coronavirus as an excuse to silence human rights activists like Wang Quanzhang

As often occurs in the ‘non-release release’ of China’s political prisoners, lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been confined in his old home after his release – ostensibly for quarantine – yet he remains under strict surveillance

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A picture of Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang is held up during a silent protest outside the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, on July 9, 2018, the third anniversary of China’s “709” crackdown on human rights lawyers. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Published: 3:00am, 15 Apr 2020Updated: 7:49am, 15 Apr 2020

Chinese and Americans have the same saying, “turn a vice into a virtue”. That’s exactly what China’s Communist Party is up to, seeking to conceal its repression of the country’s human rights lawyers.

With rights advocate Wang Quanzhang due to be released from prison on April 5 after serving 4½ years for “subversion of state power”, Beijing faced a worrisome prospect and a problem. How would it rationalise for propaganda purposes the embarrassing measures it was contemplating to ensure the lawyer’s continuing silence after his release?

Party leaders still hoping to attain soft power at home and abroad could not risk the possibility that Wang might use his regained freedom to reveal what had happened to him since his detention in the infamous “709” crackdown on human rights lawyers launched by the party on July 9, 2015. Yet they apparently could not agree on how to handle this thorny issue.

So they bought time, saying that after his prison release, Wang would have to be kept under strict surveillance for 14 days, far from his home and family in Beijing, because of the possibility that he might be infected with Covid-19.

As often occurs in the “non-release release” of China’s political prisoners, Wang was sent to his old home in Jinan, capital of Shandong province, ostensibly for quarantine but in police custody. This keeps him cut off from the world, except for calls to his wife. It is no ordinary quarantine.

Yet this excuse for further detention, which Wang’s wife decried as shameless, will expire on April 19. What will be the party’s next move then? Medical experts sometimes recommend an extra seven-day quarantine. That might be too brief for the party.