Rights defense lawyer Xu Zhiyong has continued his advocacy despite years of setbacks. The Open Constitution Initiative, a legal assistance NGO he and several other lawyers founded in 2003, was shut down in 2009 by Beijing officials, citing tax evasion. After writing a blog post about the New Citizens’ Movement last May, Xu was detained overnight. In the run-up to the National People’s Congressthis February, Xu was one of 100 signatories to an open letter to the Chinese government calling for the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Xu was put under house arrest during the Congress. He lectures at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, but has been barred from teaching because of his activism.
In an April 12 blog post, Xu describes how the police pulled him from a flight to Hong Kong and questioned him about the New Citizens’ Movement and public dinners he has helped organize to discuss issues of civil rights and democracy. Both this blog post and his April 23 essay on the New Citizens’ Movement are translated below.
On April 12, I was on my way to Hong Kong to participate in the “Symposium on the 10th Anniversay of the Sun Zhigang Case” at the invitation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Teng Biao. I went through border control waited for my flight. “See you this afternoon,” I told Teng.
