A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who was released from prison last week has threatened to protest if the authorities continue to keep him apart from his wife and daughter, neither of whom he has seen for six years, a source has said. Jiang Tianyong is now back in his parents’ home in Henan province, but his wife said he was being kept under close watch by police, with officers following him everywhere he went – even when out shopping or walking the dog – and preventing him from speaking to strangers. He is not being allowed access to a mobile phone, and visits by relatives, neighbours and friends are being tightly restricted by the police, who have been stationed near his parents’ home in Xinyang to keep round-the-clock watch over the activist. Jiang, who has represented leading human rights activists in the past, was detained in 2016 in the aftermath of the sweeping “709” crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists. The following year he was sentenced to two years in prison for inciting state subversion. His wife Jin Bianling and daughter fled to the United States in 2013. Although Jiang’s sentence also included the deprivation of political rights for three years, a source said that this should not affect his freedom to travel. “If [the authorities] will not allow [a reunion], he is prepared to make his demands known through protests and other forms of activism,” the source added. Both Jin and Wang Qiaoling, the wife of a “709” lawyer, said Jiang could not sit upright in a chair because of spinal injuries sustained while in jail. He is also suffering from ailments such as memory loss and high blood pressure, as well as an eye inflammation because he had been held in a darkened cell without sunlight in a prison in Hunan province for two years. According to his wife, her husband wanted to have a physical check-up at a hospital of his choice, but “he is followed everywhere by police who guard him” and her husband did not want them to accompany him to hospital. Speaking to the South China Morning Post from Los Angeles, where she now lives with her daughter, Jin said her husband had been taken away by state security following his release from jail and had only been allowed to return to his parents’ home after a one-day hunger strike. Chinese labour activist trio face public order charges, told to refuse lawyers, says rights group She added that Jiang had wanted to rest and comfort his ailing parents who had been under intense pressure since his arrest and conviction. Jiang was detained by Hunan police in late 2016 after he tried to visit Xie Yang, one of the 300 or so lawyers and advocates caught in the “709” crackdown on civil rights. He pleaded guilty to inciting state subversion at his trial in 2017 and was given a two-year sentence. Wang, the wife of Li Heping, one of the affected lawyers, was able to visit Jiang last Saturday but only after she had been held for six hours at a local police station. “He [Jiang] told me that he had been threatened and deceived by his interrogators [who told him] that many of the rights lawyers and their wives have been arrested. He was worried because of that and that added to his anxiety,” Wang said. Jiang was disbarred from practising law in 2009, but continued to advise human rights campaigners and lawyers, including the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled to the US embassy in Beijing while under house arrest in 2012 and was later given asylum in the United States. Jiang has also acted on behalf of his fellow human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng as well as members of Falun Gong and victims of the tainted vaccine scandal.