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Chinese police handling of teacher protest sparks fury; Merkel met wives of jailed China lawyers
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) May 28, 2018

Merkel met wives of jailed lawyers during China visit
Beijing (AFP) May 28, 2018 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel met the wives of two detained Chinese human rights lawyers during her trip to Beijing last week in a rare move for a visiting leader, the women told AFP Monday.

Heads of state or government often avoid making major public statements about human rights during their trips to China and shun meetings with activists or relatives.

Merkel did not mention the meeting with the two women during her two-day visit on Thursday and Friday, though she said she brought up human rights during her talks with Premier Li Keqiang.

A German government spokesman told AFP that Merkel had met last Thursday "with a group of human rights lawyers and relatives of people detained and discussed their situation with them".

Li Wenzu, who last month had attempted to march 100 kilometres (60 miles) to a detention facility to highlight her husband's plight before she was thwarted by police, said she met Merkel on Thursday.

Li's husband Wang Quanzhang is an attorney who represented political activists and disappeared in a 2015 police sweep. He has been charged with "subversion of state power".

Li showed AFP a photo of her meeting with Merkel during which the chancellor rests her right hand on her shoulder as they smile at each other.

"I thanked Merkel for her attention and support to 709 lawyers," Li told AFP, referring to a group of attorneys rounded up in a crackdown on July 9, 2015.

Wang was among more than 200 Chinese human rights lawyers and activists who were detained or questioned that day, the largest clampdown on the legal profession in recent history.

While most were released on bail, a handful were convicted of various crimes and sentenced to up to seven years in prison.

Wang is the last person in the so-called 709 crackdown to remain in legal limbo and no trial date has been set for him.

"I asked Merkel to help me confirm with Chinese officials whether Wang Quanzhang is still alive, and if he is, to please help me urge Chinese officials to allow my lawyer to meet him," Li said in an email.

"Merkel showed concern over the situation to me, my husband and my child, and said she will continue to support and pay attention to us."

Merkel also met Xu Yan. Her husband Yu Wensheng was charged with "inciting subversion of state power" in January, a week after he was detained as he prepared to take his son to school in Beijing.

German human rights commissioner Barbel Kofler later called for Yu's release, drawing a rebuke from China.

Human rights activists had hoped that Merkel's visit would help persuade Chinese authorities to allow poet Liu Xia, the widow of dissident Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, to leave the country.

But Liu Xia remains under de facto house arrest in Beijing.

Police in central China have come under fire on social media over their handling of a protest by teachers demanding unpaid performance bonuses, the latest in a series of reported demonstrations by educators.

The public security bureau in Lu'an, a small town in Anhui province, said it launched an investigation into allegations that officers beat some of the teachers during Sunday's demonstration.

Some 200 teachers had marched to the municipal government office with banners demanding arrears and better treatment, according to Hong Kong-based human rights blog The Activists' Network.

But a statement by the security bureau said only about 40 teachers had gathered outside the gate of the local government office.

"They refused to follow staff advice and seriously disrupted public order," the police said.

"A small number of offenders were removed from the scene", police said, adding that all those detained were later released.

The bureau has already conducted an investigation to "verify claims made online that police beat the teachers, and results will be announced in a timely manner", it said.

Photos and an unverified video being circulated on Chinese social media show police officers pulling and shoving individuals as they try to escape arrest and a woman is shown on a hospital stretcher, although no injuries are visible.

The incident triggered an outpouring of sympathy online with hundreds of comments saying police officers had been rough with the teachers.

Authorities swiftly break up protests in China, where officials are wary of large gatherings getting out of their control.

"This style of trying to tackle people voicing issues instead of solving problems is spreading all over the country," one commenter wrote.

   "How will these teachers talk about the socialist core values   that 
include freedom and fairness with students after this? Or is it all a joke?" another said.

The handling of the protest has touched a raw nerve with the Chinese public, because low pay has made it difficult for rural and small-town schools to attract and retain teachers.

Reports and comments on the incident have been quickly taken down from Chinese social media sites, making it difficult to gather details about the protest, said Geoffrey Crothall, communications director for the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based non-profit that supports worker movements in China.

Poor pay, unpaid performance bonuses and lack of pensions were major grievances affecting teachers in the country, Crothall said.

A strike map compiled by the organisation showed that there were nearly 30 protests by teachers - mostly in small towns and rural areas - across China this year.

"There has been an uptick in activism by teachers in recent months, but these tend to happen in waves," he said.


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SINO DAILY
China jails Tibetan-language advocate for 5 years
Beijing (AFP) May 22, 2018
A Tibetan who has campaigned to preserve his region's ancestral language was jailed for five years in China on Tuesday for "inciting separatism" in a case Amnesty International denounced as "beyond absurd". Tashi Wangchuk was featured in a New York Times documentary that followed him on a trip to Beijing, where he attempted to get Chinese state media and courts to address what he describes as the diminishing use of the Tibetan language. A court in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the north ... read more

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