Lawyer Lu Siwei was attempting to reach Bangkok to board flight to US to rejoin family
PUBLISHED : 29 Jul 2023 at 18:34
BEIJING: A Chinese human rights lawyer has been arrested in Laos while en route to Thailand, and activists and family members fear he could be deported back to China and face prison time.
Lao police seized Lu Siwei on Friday morning while he was boarding a train for Thailand. He was reportedly on his way to Bangkok to catch a flight to the United States to join his wife and daughter, The Associated Press reported.
“I’m extremely worried for his safety,” said his wife, Zhang Chunxiao, in a text message seen by the news agency. “If he’s sent back to China, he’d definitely be imprisoned.”
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lu had a history of taking on sensitive cases and defending people deemed to be political targets by Chinese authorities.
In 2021 he and a colleague were stripped of their licences, reportedly because they were representing the “Hong Kong 12”, a group of activists who attempted to flee the territory after China imposed a sweeping national security law.
Some of them were already facing prosecution for alleged crimes linked to the huge and often violent pro-democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019.
Lu was barred later in 2021 from leaving China for a visiting fellowship in the United States. His wife and daughter both resettled in the United States last year.
Bob Fu, founder of the Texas-based religious rights group ChinaAid, said he was contacted by Lu’s family two weeks ago to assist in his escape from China. ChinaAid earlier this year helped to get more than 60 Chinese Christians resettled in Texas after they were detained in Pattaya for overstaying their visas.
Lu’s arrest on Lao soil reflects how Beijing pursues critics abroad, Fu said, part of a broader clampdown that has instilled fear in Chinese dissents.
Lu was being accompanied by two activists working with ChinaAid when he was arrested. Police also grabbed one of the activists and confiscated his passport briefly before returning it.
Dissidents on the run from the Chinese state have reported harassment elsewhere in Southeast Asia, including the family of one detained by Thai police after bomb threats were called in under their name.