Beijing female rights defense attorney Wang Yu taken away by police and “disappeared”

Update: In two days (July 9 and 10), at least 57 lawyers and activists arrested in China.

Wang Yu issued an emergency notification on Thursday, July 10, 2015. At 3 a.m., her house suddenly lost power. Then the wireless internet connection was interrupted. Then she heard someone prying the front door open. She peered through the peephole and saw nothing but darkness. She heard occasional whispering but couldn’t hear what was being said.

On the evening of Wednesday, July 8, 2015, after driving her husband and son to the airport, Wang Yu after midnight attempted to contact them by telephone but no one answered. After this, attorney Wang Yu said online that someone was trying to pry her front door open. After this she could not be contacted.

Boxun’s correspondent and informed insiders learned that Wang Yu’s residential area security guards saw 20-30 police detaining people in the early morning. The police told the security guards that they were rounding up drug addicts.

Attorney Wang Yu is 44 years old. She’s from Ulanhot in Inner Mongolia. In May 2004 she began practicing law in Beijing. At first she practiced business law. Afterward she turned her attention to rights defense cases. In recent years she has taken on many sensitive political rights defense cases. These include the cases of Fan Mugen, Cao Shunli, Yin Xu’an and Ilham Tohti. She also participated in the infamous 2014 Jiansanjiang case in Heilongjiang Province, and appeared in court to defend a Falungong practitioner.

In June 2015, China’s official Xinhua Online network and other official media published and reprinted a number of articles pointing out that in 2008 Wang Yu was convicted of intentionally injuring several railway workers, but her conviction was overturned in 2010.  She spent more than two years in jail.

On July 2, 2015, the case of Wang Zhanqing, Ma Weishan and other religious adherents opened in court in Sanhe City, Hebei Province. Because Wang Yu was representing one of the defendants and protested the illegal actions of the judges, she was dragged out of court by bailiffs and thrown into the street in front of the court.