WUNRN
China - 5 Women’s Rights Activists, Demanding
End to Sexual
Harassment in Public Transport, Are Formally Detained in Beijing
By EDWARD WONG - MARCH 13, 2015
BEIJING — The police in Beijing have
put five young female activists under formal
detention on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” lawyers for
four of the women said on Friday. The charge is one that the Chinese
authorities have increasingly used in recent years to quell activism and
discussion of social and political issues.
All the women were being held at the
Haidian Detention Center in western Beijing, even though two of them were
detained last week in other cities in eastern China,
according to the lawyers. Only one of the women, Li Tingting, had managed to
meet face to face with a lawyer at the detention center.
“She has done nothing that would
constitute ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’ ” the lawyer, Yan Xin,
said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Yan said that Ms. Li looked fine
when he saw her on Thursday at the detention center. He said she had told him
that the police officers who showed up at her apartment on the evening of March
6 to detain her did not present complete warrants or identification cards.
“We’ll file a complaint over violations
of the law during her arrest,” he said.
The five women were first detained
in coordinated raids by police officers on the night of March 6 and on March 7
in Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou. The women had been organizing a protest
across several Chinese cities that would have been carried out around
International Women’s Day, on Sunday, to call for an end to sexual harassment
on public transportation. The protesters planned to put stickers condemning
sexual harassment on buses, subway cars and other forms of public
transportation.
The women all have ties to
Yirenping, a nonprofit group with offices throughout China that advocates equal
rights for people with hepatitis, H.I.V/AIDS and disabilities.
They are also considered young
leaders in a nationwide network of women’s rights activists. In 2012, Ms. Li,
then a 22-year-old student, organized a campaign to call for officials to
install more public toilets for women.
Besides Ms. Li, the women under
detention are Wei Tingting, Zheng Churan, Wu Rongrong and Wang Man. Ms. Zheng
had been detained in Guangzhou and Ms. Wu in Hangzhou, cities where they lived.
Lawyers for the two women said they did not know why the two were being held at
the detention center in Beijing.
At least five other female activists
were also detained last weekend but were released after being interrogated.
International women’s rights
advocates have been circulating an online petition in the past week denouncing
the seizure of the women and demanding that the Chinese authorities release them.
A woman answering the telephone at
the Haidian Detention Center on Friday declined to answer questions and said
someone would have to present the questions on paper at the center.