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Sorry - this page has been removed. China threatens human rights group linked to detained feminists
(2 months later)
This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason. China’s foreign ministry has threatened to punish a prominent non-governmental organisation that lobbied for the release of five women’s rights activists, saying the group must be held accountable for “breaking the law”.
Yirenping, an anti-discrimination NGO, has defended the rights of women and people with HIV, Hepatitis B and disabilities.
For further information, please contact: President Xi Jinping’s administration has detained hundreds of activists in the past two years, in what some rights groups say is the worst clampdown on dissent in two decades.
Related: Women's human rights defenders under threat – podcast
In late March, Chinese police officers raided Yirenping’s office and seized laptops and details of contacts, its co-founder, Lu Jun, told Reuters.
The NGO had also lobbied for the release of the five activists whose detentions sparked an outcry in the west and among Chinese rights campaigners. The women, who were campaigning against domestic violence and discrimination, were released on bail on Monday.
“For the organisation they are affiliated with, Beijing Yirenping Centre, because this organisation is suspected of violating the law, it will face punishment,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said at a daily news briefing.
It is unclear what punishment Yirenping will face. Lu, who is in New York, did not respond to a request for comment. Calls to its Beijing office went unanswered.
For more than a month, Lu has campaigned for the release of the women, sending journalists information and setting up a Facebook group called Free Chinese Feminists.
Wang Zheng, an academic researching women and gender in Chinese society at Michigan University, said she believed Chinese authorities targeted the women activists because “they want to smash Yirenping”.
“The authorities probably don’t want to make too big a splash by arresting the head of Yirenping, so they detained these young women to send the message,” Wang said in an interview published last weekend on China Change, a website on civil society in China.
“They succeeded in terrifying Yirenping. Once these young feminists were detained, everyone working at Yirenping knew this was about Yirenping,” she said.