(Liaoning, China) The case of human rights lawyer Li Yuhan continues to face delays. On November 25, sources from Liaoning stated that the court recently extended Li’s detention period three more months. Family members call for attention to Li Yuhan, who has been persecuted and detained for five years for condemning the Shenyang judiciary’s peremptory and illegal behavior.
Lawyer Li Yuhan’s brother, Li Yongsheng, hired a local lawyer in Liaoning for his sister. Li Yongsheng published a message, saying, “it is very difficult for out-of-town lawyers to meet at the detention center due to the pandemic, and there are even other factors that make it impossible for meetings.”
A local lawyer met with Li Yuhan on November 23 and learned that the Heping District People’s Court in Shenyang extended the detention period by another three months, stating that it had been approved by the Supreme People’s Court. However, the defense only received a notice of change to the detention period from the Heping District People’s Court and not receive an approval letter from the Supreme People’s Court of China or any paperwork in regard to the extension of detention period.
Li Yuhan and her family never received any legal documents of this extension, despite more than five years of prolonged detention. The judge in charge of the case, Xue Silin, deceived the detainee and her family, saying that Li Yuhan could be released on bail but did not process it. The judge claimed that the results of the trial will soon be available, but a year has passed since then without any verdict.
Li Yongsheng revealed that he has been unable to get in touch with Judge Xue during this time, the judge’s landline has been busy and cannot be reached, and calls to the cell phone also go unanswered.
He suspects that the judge is deceitful to the family; he expressed:
I want to ask Judge Xue when will there be a result? Are there documents from the Supreme People’s Court stating the approval for extension of detention for the multiple extensions? Is there a document of approval for each extension of detention? Can the party involved and her family request (and do they have the right to request) the court to provide these documents as well as the reasons and factual basis for the extension of detention? Is there a legally prescribed term limit for detention? Is there a solution to such excessive detention and the delayed verdict? The detention can’t just be prolonged indefinitely like this!
In October 2017, Li Yuhan went to Shenyang to work on a case, and on October 9, she texted her brother that she was being “taken away” by Shenyang police. Since then, Li Yuhan has been out of contact with the outside world and has been held in solitary confinement. Her family learned of her detention on October 31, more than 20 days after the forced disappearance. Police formally arrested Li on November 15. She went on a hunger strike in February 2018 to protest the extension of her detention and the guards’ delay in giving her the medication. Friends and family put money together for her but were refused by the police. She was also subjected to verbal abuse and mistreatment by her cellmates in the detention center.
The trial of Li Yuhan was initially scheduled to begin at the Heping District Court in Shenyang but was abruptly canceled three days before the hearing. The lawyer found that the authorities had added a new “fraud” charge to the original charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Shenyang law enforcement authorities announced to the public that the trial would begin on October 20, 2021, after repeatedly extending Li Yuhan’s pretrial detention under various pretexts. However, no verdict has been handed down in the case since.
At present, lawyer Li is in extremely poor health; she suffers from severe knee effusion, is unable to walk, and needs crutches for support; she has high blood pressure, different heart conditions, tinnitus, and macular degeneration, which has caused vision loss, she is in dire need of medication treatment. According to her family members, Li Yuhan suffers from seven diseases, and the authorities have repeatedly rejected the lawyer’s request for medical parole and extended the detention period several times.
Lawyer Li Yuhan was born in 1957 in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. She received her license to practice law in 1990 and started practicing in Liaoning in 1991. In 2006, because she reported a triad leader in Shenyang City, local police protected by the triad retaliated. She was kidnapped, detained, and objected to violence by the police many times. In 2009, she was forced to go to Beijing to escape their harassment and began working at Beijing Dunxin Law Firm. Li insisted on reporting the persecution of the Shenyang triad.
Over the years, Li Yuhan has defended Christian house churches and other sensitive cases. Li represented lawyer Wang Yu in the “709 crackdown,” where she was often subjected to retaliation from Chinese authorities for her concerns about government and police misconduct, including threats against her family, verbal harassment, violence, and physical assault. Because Li Yuhan refused to give in to Shenyang law enforcement’s attempt to force her to confess, the judge notified her that the recommended sentence for her would be five to six years.
~Gao Zhensai, Special Correspondent of ChinaAid Association)