Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng sentenced to four years in prison
- Yu’s wife Xu Yan says she rejects verdict of trial held in secret in May last year.
- ‘China must stop this illegal and arbitrary oppression of its people,’ she says
Xu Yan said she received a call on Wednesday morning from the Xuzhou City Prosecutor’s Office telling her the news.
Her husband had also been deprived of his political rights for three years as part of the sentence, she said.
“They held the trial secretly, ruled secretly, against the law, without telling the families or his lawyers, without telling anyone, not caring about the rule of law,” she said. “Is this country that has the rule of law?”
Yu, 53, was apprehended by the authorities in January 2018 as he was leaving his flat in Beijing to take his 13-year-old son to school. He had earlier written an open letter calling for constitutional reforms, including multi-candidate elections in China, and had been barred from practising as a lawyer on January 15, just days before being taken into custody.
