Lawyers defending a blind rural activist detained after he exposed forced abortions and sterilizations have been thwarted in their efforts to sue over veiled threats to his life, a member of the defense team said.
Li Jinsong, who was briefly detained himself and received a threatening phone call after visiting his client in custody last week in eastern Shandong province, said on Sunday a policeman had warned the activist, 34-year-old Chen Guangcheng, that prison was a dangerous place.
“(The officer) said ‘In detention it is easy for people to die. Someone died the other day. If you won’t confess you won’t come out alive. And don’t put your hopes on those Beijing lawyers because they are already locked up’,” Li told Reuters.
Chen, a self-taught legal expert who drew international attention last year to accusations that officials were enforcing coercive family planning measures under China’s one-child policy, has been under house arrest or in detention since September.
He was formally arrested last week on charges of destroying public property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic.
Li said Chen was not getting enough to eat but seemed calm and relatively healthy at a police-supervised meeting.
His legal team want to press charges to force authorities to provide more food, investigate the officer’s threat and charge whoever held Chen between March—when he was taken from his home—and mid-June, when police said he was in their custody.
But the lawyers say they cannot launch the case on Chen’s behalf without written permission from his wife Yuan Weijing and they have been forcibly prevented from meeting her.
Li said he set out for Yuan’s village after visiting Chen but was stopped at a roadblock marked as a checkpoint for bird flu and SARS, where a mob forced him back into his taxi and began attacking the car until he retreated.
Li himself was also threatened after meeting Chen by an anonymous phone caller who asked if he wanted to die.
Beijing in May announced curbs on lawyers who represent protesters, saying they must “protect national stability”, and warned them off contact with foreign media.
But Li said he believed local officials had misrepresented the case to central government.
“The central government needs people like Chen ... because he can deter corrupt officials from misusing their power,” Li said. “If the (local officials) are afraid of my work, it means that I am on the right track.”
An official from Yinan county detention house who declined to give his name said that Chen was healthy and his safety was guaranteed, but declined to comment further. Security officials at village and county level could not be reached for comment.
