Geneva, Feb 12 (EFE) .- Chinese lawyer Yu Wensheng, detained by the authorities of his country since 2018 and sentenced last year to four years in prison for “subversion”, was awarded the Martin Ennals Prize today, one of the most prestigious in the fight for human rights.
Yu, 53 years old and held incommunicado from her family since her arrest, beat out two other finalists, the Saudi activist for women’s rights Loujain al Hathloul (released on Wednesday after spending 1,001 days in prison) and the Turkmen photojournalist Soltan Achilova , who with his works denounced the abuses of the regime in that isolated Central Asian country.
Lawyer Yu is one of the most prominent personalities who have been the victims of the government campaign against legal defenders of activists and dissidents in China, started in 2015 by the communist regime and which has resulted in more than 300 arrests or disappearances.
The lawyer was arrested on January 19, 2018, when he was taking his son to school, a day after he publicly called for free elections in China and other political reforms in a letter.
In May 2019, he was subjected to a secret trial, of which not even his family was informed, although the sentence was not known until June 2020.
The crime for which he was sentenced to four years in prison, “inciting subversion against the power of the state”, is commonly used by Chinese courts to punish dissidents, human rights activists and other actors critical of the regime.
In his few contacts with an independent defense lawyer, Yu denounced having suffered torture and mistreatment during his trial, which caused him a serious physical deterioration, and thus, for example, he has lost a large part of the mobility of his right hand.
During his career, Yu participated in the defense of several human rights cases, such as those of members of the religious group Falun Gong (banned in China since 1999), or colleagues, including several detainees in 2015 in what is known as ” raid 709 “.
Yu’s award “puts the Chinese government on notice that unjustly imprisoning him or any other human rights defender will not go unnoticed, it will not silence their voices,” said Phil Lynch, executive director of the International Service for Human Rights ( ISHR), one of the NGOs that awarded the award.
The Ennals Prize is awarded by common agreement by ten internationally recognized human rights organizations, including Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Organization against Torture (OMCT).
With an amount of 50,000 Swiss francs (about 46,000 euros), it is delivered annually and bears the name of the one who was AI’s secretary general between 1968 and 1980.
In 2016 it was also awarded to a Chinese activist, Uighur rights defender Ilham Tohti, sentenced to life imprisonment for “separatism” in 2014. EFE
–
