CHINA

29 July 2009

A prominent Beijing

human rights lawyer

Xu Zhiyong

Retour page d'accueil

arrested

for tax evasion

nearly three weeks after he was detained.

UPDATE ; Xu Zhiyong was released on 23 August 2009 after being detained for three weeks and pledged to defend himself vigorously if authorities proceed with a prosecution.

Source : China Daily

Xu Zhiyong, co-founder of Gongmeng, a legal assistance group, was taken from his home by security officers at dawn on July 29, according to a statement from Gongmeng.

Zhou Ze, Xu's lawyer, told China Daily that Beijing prosecutors had approved a police application to arrest Xu for tax evasion.

Beijing municipal authorities ordered the closure of Gongmeng last month for not being "registered properly". Beijing tax authorities also sent a formal notice to the center last month, imposing a fine of 1.4 million yuan ($207,000) for evading taxes on funds received from overseas.

The notice of his arrest has been sent to Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, where Xu works as a professor. An officer with the university's security department who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue confirmed to China Daily that the school had received the notice, but would not give further details.

The arrest brings Xu's case closer to a possible trial, although officials have not made a firm decision to prosecute. If tried and found guilty, Xu faces a maximum penalty of seven years in jail, according to the Criminal Law.

Xu is currently being kept at the Beijing detention house, Zhou said.

Xu, in his late 30s, gained national attention in 2003 when he took up the case of Sun Zhigang, a college graduate who died after being beaten in a penitentiary hospital in the southern province of Guangdong. The case helped to bring about the abolition of such penitentiary hospitals used to hold migrants accused of not having the right documents.

The combination of legal casework and public advocacy used by Xu and his colleagues set an example for many subsequent campaigns.

In 2005, Xu registered the Gongmeng group. With other scholars and lawyers, Xu has been providing legal help to the country's disadvantaged groups, including some of the parents of children who fell ill after drinking contaminated milk powder last year.

Information about Xu has been blocked on the internet as the search for "Xu Zhiyong (Chinese characters)"on Google.cn and Baidu, two major search engines, generated: "Your search results don't conform to related laws and policy".

TAKE ACTION NOW !