Authorities in Myanmar have detained the teenage son of detained Chinese rights lawyer Wang Yu in a murky cross-border operation after he was denied permission to leave the country legally, a rights website and a Chinese lawyer said on Friday.
Bao Zhuoxuan, also known by his nickname Bao Mengmeng, was taken away from the Huadu Guesthouse in the border town of Mongla by Burmese police on Tuesday, the China Change website reported.
Two adult males, Tang Zhishun and Xing Qingxian were detained at the same time. The trio had crossed the border as tourists during the National Day holidays last week, it said.
It quoted the guesthouse owner as saying that the police had shown Burmese IDs, but local police later denied having detained anyone.
Bao Mengmeng was initially held at an unknown location following the detention of his parents, Bao Longjun and Wang Yu, which kicked off a nationwide police operation that has detained or questioned at least 288 lawyers and their associates since the night of July 9-10.
Bao, who had planned to attend college in Australia, was later told he couldn't leave China because his departure would "harm state security," and police confiscated his passport.
A number of rights lawyers have also been stopped by border guards from leaving China since.
Wang's colleague and supporter Yu Wensheng confirmed the report, but said he was having a hard time confirming exactly what had happened.
"It's likely that [Bao] is already in the hands of the Chinese police," Yu told RFA on Friday.
But he added: "The details of the situation aren't clear at the moment, because I only learned about this today. I am still not sure whether they were detained by Myanmar police or by Chinese police who had crossed the border."
He said Bao's whereabouts are still unknown, however, and that he had heard that the case is being handled by the state security police from China's northern region of Inner Mongolia.
No case file in Mongla
Mongla is in a military zone controlled by former Chinese citizen Lin Xianming and his son Lin Daode of the 815 Army, but China's currency, the yuan, circulates freely there, and there are close economic ties, as well as cross-border postal services.
Local residents are mostly ethnic Han Chinese, and the official language is Mandarin. The region has regular transport links across the border and shares a telephone code with China's Xishuangbanna region, whose police officers have the ability to cross the border easily.
An officer who answered the phone at the Mongla police bureau, however, declined to confirm who had detained Bao.
"Are you absolutely sure it was us who detained him?" the officer said. "If we had, there would be a case file set up here. We wouldn't have been able to detain him without a case file."
"I don't really know what's going on."
Asked if Myanmar police had acted on a request from Chinese police, he said it was unlikely.
"We don't just take orders from the Chinese side ... just like that,"
he said. "I think you should ask our leaders if you want to get answers to this question."
An officer who answered the phone at the Xishuangbanna police bureau in China said its officers have carried out cross-border arrests in the past.
"Sometimes we go [there] if it's necessary," the officer said. But he declined to comment on the detention of Bao.
"How would I know about that? There's no point in talking to me about this stuff," he said.
According to China Change, Bao's friends have reported the three detainees missing with local police, but say the guesthouse owner is refusing to discuss the case following a second visit from local police.
Wang Yu is being held under "residential surveillance" at an unknown location on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," as well as the more serious "incitement to subvert state power," her lawyers have said.
But repeated requests from Wang's and Bao Longjun's lawyers for a meeting with their clients have been turned down by the authorities.
China’s tightly controlled state media has accused the Fengrui lawyers of “troublemaking” and seeking to incite mass incidents by publicizing cases where they defend some of the most vulnerable groups in society.
Wang is well-known in China's human rights community for representing some of the most vulnerable people in Chinese society.
Her clients have included jailed moderate ethnic Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, outspoken rights activist Cao Shunli, who died after being denied medical treatment in detention and members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.
She has also represented forced evictees and petitioners, as well as activists seeking to protect the rights of women and children, and the right to freedom of religion, housing and of expression.
Wang Yu has frequently been harassed, threatened, searched, and physically assaulted by police since she began to take on rights abuse cases in 2011.
Hong Kong campaigners on Friday marched to Beijing's representative office in the former British colony to demand the release of all detained Chinese human rights lawyers.
Holding banners and chanting "Release the rights activists! Release the lawyers!" the group held up a list of detainees it wanted released immediately.
Napier Ng of the Progressive Lawyers' Group which helped organize the protest, said many lawyers in Hong Kong, where rule of law has largely persisted since the 1997 handover to China, are worried about the crackdown across the internal border.
"It is quite chilling for people who work in the legal profession in Hong Kong," Ng told RFA on Friday. "Today, mainland China, tomorrow, Hong Kong."
"For every day that goes by [without their release] more and more Hong Kong people will stop believing Beijing's promises regarding the rule of law here," he said.
Pan-democratic lawmaker and rights lawyer Albert Ho, who heads the Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, said the situation for China's embattled legal profession is "extremely serious."
"We have never seen such a large operation targeting lawyers before," Ho said. "The [government's] actions are trampling on their stated policy of ruling the country according to law."
Reported by Lo Man-san and Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/teen-son-of-detained-rights-lawyer-taken-away-from-myanmar-guesthouse-10092015132215.html
