Case history: Xing Qingxian
Tang Zhishun and Xing Qingxian are currently in detention in Tianjin in China on charges of "organizing the smuggling of persons across a national boundary.". Burmese police reportedly took the two human rights defenders, along with Bao Zhuoxuan, the son of detained human rights defender Ms Wang Yu, from their Myanmar hotel on 6 October 2015 as they attempted to bring Bao Zhuoxuan to Thailand.
Xing Qingxian is a human rights defender from Chengdu who has worked with grassroots communities in the city to help them defend their rights and publicise information about human rights abuses. In 2009 he was sentenced to two years in prison for organising a demonstration outside a courthouse in Chengdu to protest unjust rulings.
Burmese police reportedly took two human rights defenders, Tang Zhishun and Xing Qingxian, along with Bao Zhuoxuan, the son of detained human rights defender Ms Wang Yu, from their Myanmar hotel on 6 October. Their current whereabouts are unknown.
At around midday on 6 October 2015, ten Burmese police officers reportedly arrived at the Huadu Guest House in Mongla, Myanmar, searched the room in which Tang Zhishun, Xing Qingxian and Bao Zhuoxuan were staying, and then proceeded to take the three of them away. The three were travelling in Myanmar during a period of national holidays in China. On 7 October friends of the three went to the local police station to make inquiries but police denied any knowledge of the three's whereabouts and also denied that they had detained them the previous day. On 8 October at around 11pm the home of Xing Qingxian was searched by national security police in Chengdu, China.
On July 2015 Bao Zhuoxuan and his father, Bao Longjun, were detained by police at Beijing Capital Airport as Bao Zhuoxuan prepared to board a flight to Australia where he was intending to continue his studies. That same day, Wang Yu was taken from her home in Beijing on charges of 'inciting subversion of state power'. Her current whereabouts are unknown and her lawyers have been denied permission to meet with her. Bao Longjun also remains in detention at an unknown location and his lawyers have similarly been denied access to him. After being detained briefly, Bao Zhuoxuan was released but in the following weeks was called in for questioning a number of times by police.
Front Line Defenders is gravely concerned by the disappearance of Tang Zhishun, Xing Qingxian and Bao Zhuoxuan and believes that their detention by police in Myanmar is directly related to the human rights work of Wang Yu and Bao Longjun in China.
