A Chinese professor who has gained notoriety for staying one particular of the couple of outspoken critics of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Social gathering was taken from his house Monday on what his friends and loved ones maintain are trumped-up charges.
Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University, was positioned underneath dwelling arrest previously this 12 months for crafting an short article that criticized Xi and his administration for their dealing with of the coronavirus pandemic.
Numerous of his pals instructed the BBC that all-around 20 law enforcement officers confirmed up at his home early Monday, seizing his pc and papers ahead of taking him absent.
“He retained a bag with clothing and a toothbrush hanging on his front door so he would be all set for this,” a close friend of Xu, Geng Xiaonan, informed The New York Moments.
One more close friend instructed AFP that Xu’s spouse experienced received a contact from a person who mentioned Xu was accused of soliciting prostitution – an allegation the good friend dismissed as “ridiculous.”
Xu earlier stoked the ire of social gathering officers in 2018, when he published an essay that denounced Xi’s progressively authoritarian policies.
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“People nationwide, which includes the entire bureaucratic elite, experience as soon as a lot more shed in uncertainty about the route of the state and about their own individual security,” Xu wrote in the essay.
The professor’s detainment comes amid a broader crackdown by the Chinese Communist Bash on dissenters.
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Last month, the country’s legislature handed a draft of a countrywide protection bill for Hong Kong that critics say jeopardizes the territory’s semi-autonomous standing.
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