Mainland Chinese lawyer delisted after taking up Hong Kong fugitives case barred from leaving country to join US fellowship programme
- Lu Siwei was one of two lawyers delisted by mainland authorities after each represented one of 12 Hong Kong fugitives who had been intercepted at sea
- Officials stopped him at Shanghai airport on Saturday when he was about to board a flight to Seattle to attend the Humphrey Programme
A lawyer in mainland China deregistered after taking up the case of one of the Hong Kong fugitives who were captured while trying to flee to Taiwan has been barred on national security grounds from leaving the country to attend an American fellowship programme.
Lu Siwei was delisted along with Ren Quanniu earlier this year by mainland provincial judicial authorities after handling cases relating to the 12 fugitives arrested as they attempted to escape prosecution over their roles in Hong Kong’s anti-government protests.
On Saturday, border security guards stopped Lu at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport as he was about to board the Delta Air Lines’ DL288 flight for Seattle, the lawyer told the Post, after news of the incident surfaced on social media.
“They told me I could not leave,” Lu said, adding while he was not formally detained, and was eventually let go, the authorities prevented him from using his mobile phone for two hours. “In a way, they restricted my personal liberty,” he said.
The lawyer said he had earlier been barred from leaving the mainland when he wanted to attend a legal forum in Hong Kong at the start of 2020.
He believed his involvement in the fugitives’ case might have triggered mainland authorities to extend the travel ban to prevent him from attending the academic programme, which he said would not be covering sensitive topics.
A former human rights lawyer, Lu also had his professional licence revoked in January this year, after he took up the fugitives’ case. The dozen were intercepted by the Chinese coastguard at sea in August last year, after they departed from a Hong Kong dock on a speedboat towards Taiwan.
