China uses coronavirus as cover to stop dissidents, activists say

On the day of his release from prison, Wang Quanzhang, one of China’s leading human rights lawyers, thought he was finally free.

After being held for almost five years on charges of subversion of state power, the police escorted him to an apartment building in the eastern city of Jinan. There, they gave him a room with iron bars on the windows. Twenty policemen were on duty outside. His mobile phone was confiscated, and his use was later restricted and monitored.

Mr. Wang was indeed under temporary house arrest, but the authorities had another name: quarantine.

Human rights activists say the coronavirus has given Chinese authorities a new pretext to arrest dissidents. Summary quarantines, often imposed just after detainees, such as Mr. Wang, had approved an earlier one, are the latest way to silence dissent, part of a larger campaign under China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to end activism through tougher arrests, detentions and internet controls, activists say.

Before the pandemic, China had already mounted an intensive human rights offensive, which many activists described as the most aggressive since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Quarantined activists are often detained without the knowledge of their families. Typically, “they are not allowed to communicate with the outside world, they are kept in a secret place and they are not given the option of self-isolation at home,” said Frances Eve, deputy director of research for Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an agency for monitoring of rights.

“This treatment is de facto enforced disappearance,” he said.

Although two-week quarantines are common in Asia for returning travelers, and prisons have been identified as hot spots for coronavirus transmission, details of Mr. Wang’s case suggest that he was not detained for public health reasons.

When he was forced into a two-week quarantine in April, the outbreak had already been tamed in Jinan, and people were free to move around the city and return to work. Mr. Wang said that he had already tested negative for the virus five times in prison and had completed a quarantine of 14 days before his release.

“All of China is now about epidemic prevention,” said Wang, who was in prison for three years before being charged, and who was the last of hundreds of human rights lawyers to be tried and sentenced after their arrests in 2015..

“Under such a great slogan, personal freedom can be compromised and nothing can be said,” he said.

Yaqiu Wang, a Chinese researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the pandemic had given the government an excuse to restrict the movement so it can “justify violating people’s human rights.”

“These people are clearly not in any condition that needs to be quarantined,” said Wang. “It has no scientific basis, it is just an excuse for the government to restrict its movements and repress its speech.”

Eve said her rights group had documented nine cases of activists who were recently released from prison and later quarantined, but added that “there are probably many more.”

Among those forcibly detained in quarantine, the group says, is a citizen journalist who tried to raise awareness of the initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan; five labor rights activists; and a fired worker who, in an interview with a foreign media outlet, had urged people to take up arms against the ruling Communist Party.

The Chinese Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a request for comment.

China’s government is not alone in using the pandemic as an excuse to gain more power, restrict rights, or crack down on dissent. The Indian government has rounded up and arrested critics. President Rodrigo Duterte from the Philippines The police were recently authorized to enter the homes of people looking for the sick. And in Hungary, the Prime Minister can now rule by decree.

Although Chinese law gives the government emergency powers to quarantine people during a public health emergency, several local officials have indicated that the practice of quarantining convicts violates those regulations.

In central Hubei province, police said prisoners who complete their prison terms should be released within 24 hours, according to Shanghai Observer, a state-controlled news website.

The newspaper, a Shanghai government-run news site, quoted police officers in Sichuan province as saying that prisoners must be released “in accordance with the law” after undergoing a 14-day quarantine within prison and a physical exam, which includes a nucleic acid test for the coronavirus, blood tests, and a CT scan.

Jiang Jiawen, 65, the fired worker named by Chinese human rights defenders, who had asked to resist the Communist Party, completed a 1.5-year sentence in March for “picking up disputes and causing trouble.” In July, he was on his way to meet a friend at a Beijing railway station when he was stopped by state security agents.

They took him to a detention center and interrogated him, Mr. Jiang said. Then they told him he had to be quarantined and they took him to a hotel room in the northern city of Dandong, more than 500 miles away. The room had iron bars on the door and windows. Two police officers and two government officials were watching outside.

No one took his temperature during the 14-day quarantine, Jiang said. Authorities initially asked him to pay the $ 17 a day quarantine fee, he said, but declined.

“They just want to find a reason to stop us,” Jiang said. “The epidemic has given them a good reason.”

Ding Yajun, a 51-year-old woman who had protested the forced demolition of her home, was released from prison on May 11 in the northern city of Harbin after serving a three-year sentence, also for “fighting and causing trouble . “When she was in prison, officials cleared her throat, tested her for blood, and quarantined her.

Still, upon her release, Ms. Ding was quarantined again. For more than a month, she was held in a windowless room that was locked with an iron cane, she said. She was finally released on June 16.

Liu Xianbin, who spent 10 years in prison for writing articles critical of the Chinese government, was released on June 27 and told to complete a 14-day quarantine. But he was allowed to do it at his home in southwestern Sichuan province, according to his wife, Chen Mingxian.

“This is national policy and these are special circumstances,” said Ms. Chen. “So we support it and understand it.”

Mr. Wang, the human rights lawyer, is now back in Beijing with his family. He says they follow him occasionally, but he doesn’t think he is under 24-hour surveillance, as most dissidents are released from prison.

Recalling his time in quarantine after his release, Wang said that police officers often watched him, despite the fact that he was supposed to be isolated.

“It was absurd,” he said. “The real purpose was to shut up and tell me not to contact my friends.”

Liu Yi contributed to the investigation.