Isolated, tortured and mentally scarred ... the plight of China’s persecuted human rights lawyers
Many of those arrested are still being subjected to abuse and torture, campaigners say on second anniversary of 2015 purge
Exactly two years ago, in the dead of night, the quiet of Wang Yu’s Beijing home was shattered by the roar of an electric drill boring into her door.
Moments earlier, the internet connection to the apartment had been cut and the lights had gone out, plunging the prominent human rights lawyer – who was home alone after dropping off her husband and son at the airport earlier in the day – into an unsettling darkness.
The drilling stopped. A gang of men burst into the flat, shoved Wang onto the bed and handcuffed her. She was hauled out to a waiting vehicle, had a hood pulled over her head, and was driven to a secret facility whose location is unknown to this day.
There, the 45-year-old was forced to sit cross-legged for weeks inside a circle drawn on her bed. Any time she complained she was scolded or beaten.
A leading figure in China’s burgeoning human rights movement, Wang last month recounted the events of the night she was taken, and her subsequent detention and torture, to her defence lawyer Wen Donghai. It was their first meeting since she’d been released on bail last August following a televised “confession”.