Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang has not been seen since he was jailed in his home country three years ago.
All of the efforts of his friends, colleagues and his wife, Li Wenzu, have just led to their own harassment by Chinese police, according to the BBC.
His case though is not an isolated incident in a country of 1.4 billion ruled with an strong grip by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Community Party. Business Insider has put together a chilling account of the type of strategies that are used in the Asian superpower to cull dissension.
There is the case of Liu Xia, the wife of another detained human rights activist, Liu Xiaobo, who was herself placed in house arrest for attempting to travel to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her husband. She was never accused of a crime, but kept under house arrest for eight years anyway.
The government even manages to intimidate detractors outside of its borders. Chinese-Canadian actress Anastasia Lin, an outspoken critic, told Business Insider that Chinese security agents contacted her father. They told him that her family members still in China, “would be persecuted like in the Cultural Revolution.”
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.