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Prominent lawyer 'still in detention' in China

Despite receiving suspended sentence whereabouts of Li Heping remain unknown, rights group says
Prominent lawyer 'still in detention' in China

Wang Qiaoling, the wife of detained lawyer Li Heping, poses for a photograph in Beijing. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP)

Published: May 03, 2017 04:44 AM GMT
Updated: May 03, 2017 04:45 AM GMT

Prominent Chinese Christian human rights lawyer Li Heping remains in detention despite being receiving a suspended sentence by a court in Tianjin, Human Rights Watch said.

Li was found guilty of "subversion of state power" after a trial held in secret and was handed a four-year suspended term during a sentencing hearing on April 28.

But despite the suspended sentence, the authorities haven't released Li, nor said where he is and when they plan to do so, the rights group reports.

While strangers were allowed to attend Li's verdict announcement, his family was not even informed of it, or his secret trial on April 25.

Li's lawyer — assigned by the police after they forced Li to fire the lawyers his family chose for him — was also not in the courtroom.

Instead, that lawyer traveled with police to Beijing to help them pressure Li's wife, Wang Qiaoling, to go to Tianjin to meet Li, whom she has not seen since he was detained in July 2015.

Wang rejected the request, fearing that she would find herself under house arrest.

Some family members of the previously "released" lawyers have met that fate after being led by police to "reunite" them with their loved ones, Wang said in a statement.

Li became well known for defending the disenfranchised, including Christian house churches, victims of forced evictions and free speech advocates.

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