Imprisoned civil rights lawyer’s health seriously worsens

When lawyer Liu Lianhe went to the Beijing Number One Detention Center to meet his client, he learned that the client was detained in the same cell with civil rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, and that Pu’s health was very worrisome.

Attorney Liu Lianhe said: “My client told me that Pu Zhiqiang was in terrible condition and had to have injections and took medicine every day. He asked me to say hello to Mr. Tang Jitian. He misses everyone very much and really wants to know the situation outside! In just a few months, Attorney Pu was questioned more than 70 times. Pu has serious diabetes. He is 1.9 meters (6 feet 3 inches) tall and the bed at the detention center is not long enough for him. He has to sleep on the floor every day.”

A native of Luanxian County, Hebei Province, Pu Zhiqiang is a well-known  lawyer who often represented his clients in civil rights cases. He has been arrested several times by the Chinese police. On Feb. 6, 2013, he named Zhou Yongkang in a complaint, asking that the higher authorities of the Chinese Communist Party expose and criticize problems caused by the Politics and Law Committee when Zhou Yongkang led it.

Pu was put into criminal detention by the Beijing police on May 6, 2014 for “causing a public disturbance” after he and several dozen scholars attended a private forum in memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. On World Human Rights Day on December 10, 2014, Mr. Mo Shaoping, Pu Zhiqiang’s attorney, got a copy of the complaint charging Pu Zhiqiang with “causing a public disturbance, inciting ethnic hatred, inciting splitting of the state, and illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information.”

Mo Shaoping and Shang Baojun, another attorney in this case, said the charges against Pu Zhiqiang have something to do with his posts on Weibo (a microblog), which included criticism of the Beijing authorities such as their responsibility for the Kunming Railway Station attack (where knives were used to injure and kill people) and the Sino-Japanese dispute over the sovereignty of islands in the East China Sea.

On December 18, 2014, Pu Zhiqiang’s wife, Ms. Meng Qun, wrote an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, claiming that Pu Zhiqiang was questioned for long hours during his detention, worsening his health. She asked that the authorities release Pu Zhiqiang immediately. Pu Zhiqiang suffers from diabetes, hypertension and coronary heart disease.

http://news.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2015/01/201501132226.shtml