Beijing, China:
The wife of a repeatedly detained Chinese human rights lawyer died of cancer in the United States on Monday after her husband’s pleas to leave China and reunite with her were ignored, human rights activists said.
Zhang Qing fled to the United States with the couple’s children in 2009 after her husband Yang Maodong highlighted local corruption in a Chinese village and was jailed.
Zhang was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer in January 2021 and died in hospital at the age of 55, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement Monday.
Yang had published an open letter to the Chinese government in January 2021 after learning of Zhang’s diagnosis, pleading with authorities to “have empathy for ordinary people” and allow him to leave the country to see his wife. to visit.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post last month, Zhang said her life was coming to an end and multiple attempts by her husband to leave China and join her had been blocked.
Yang — who also goes by his pen name Guo Feixiong — is a writer and lawyer known for helping residents of a southern Chinese village organize themselves in 2006 against a local Communist Party boss whom they believe was accused of illegally selling their land to enrich themselves .
Yang has been jailed repeatedly and faced police harassment and numerous beatings as a result of his plea.
His whereabouts are currently unknown. Zhang said in the interview that she had not been able to contact him for several months.
Zhang and Yang hadn’t been able to see each other since Yang’s detention in 2006, during which Yang was blocked by authorities from leaving the country even during his periodic periods outside detention, Human Rights Watch said.
“Only by releasing Guo and allowing him to leave China to attend her funeral can Chinese authorities begin to reduce the cruelty inflicted on the couple and their family,” study researcher Yaqiu Wang wrote Monday. in the statement, using the activist’s pseudonym.
The Washington-based coalition of Chinese human rights defenders also called Beijing’s treatment of the couple “cruel and inhumane”.
“It is futile and evil to prevent Guo Feixiong from saying goodbye to his dying wife,” said Renee Xia, CHRD director.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)