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The Edelstam Prize 2018 was awarded to Ms Li Wenzu from China for outstanding achievements and exceptional courage in standing up for her belief in the defence of human rights. The award ceremony took place on 27 November 2018 at the House of Nobility in Stockholm, Sweden.
Unfortunately, the award winner, Ms Li Wenzu, was unable to travel to Stockholm to receive the award as she is not allowed to leave the country. Therefore, Mrs Yuan Weijing, a Chinese human rights activist and wife of exiled lawyer Chen Guangcheng, accepted the award on her behalf.
Li Wenzu was born on 5 April 1985 in Badong, Hubei Province, where she completed her secondary education. At the age of 24, she moved to Beijing to look for work. There she met her husband and they married after a year. Her husband, Wang Quanzhang, is a Chinese human rights lawyer who has defended and persecuted activists and victims of land seizures and formerly defended practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Wenzu was content with her life as a housewife until the fateful day Wang Quanzhang disappeared.
More than 200 Chinese human rights lawyers and activists were detained or interrogated for several days from 9 July 2015 in the harshest crackdown on the legal profession in recent history, known as the „709 Crackdown“. The China Human Rights LawyersConcern Group estimates that 319 lawyers, activists and people associated with them were interrogated, detained or „disappeared“ during the crackdown.
During the initial period of their detention, many of the arrested lawyers and activists were held incommunicado and their families were given no information about their well-being or whereabouts. The majority of them were subsequently released on bail, while a few were convicted of various crimes and sentenced to up to seven years in prison.
Wang Quanzhang’s situation is different, however, as no trial dates have been announced. He is thus the last prisoner in the „709 Crackdown“ who is legally in a no-man’s land. The Chinese regime has accused him of „subversion of state power“, a collective crime with which it has long persecuted individuals and organisations seen as a threat to the one-party state. In fact, the sole aim of Wang Quanzhang and his fellow lawyers was to defend the disenfranchised and promote the rule of law in China. According to the Chinese human rights group, Quanzhang was tortured with electric shocks while in custody.
Li Wenzu and Wang Qiaoling (the wife of human rights lawyer Li Heping) were the first members among those who later became known as the „709 Family“ due to their activities. As frontline human rights defenders, they have actively sought out families of people affected by the „709 Crackdown“ to understand their needs and support them in any way they can. To carry out this work, Li Wenzu and Wang Qiaoling have travelled all over the country. They have been arrested several times for visiting „sensitive“ family members of other human rights lawyers and have managed to mobilise them. „That was a big change. Faced with these circumstances alone, we were very scared. But together we can encourage each other. That helped us a lot,“ says Li Wenzu.
Ms Li Wenzu has played a prominent and crucial role in the „709 Family“ by developing creative campaign ideas and helping to shape the group’s characteristic activism. She is the one who holds the group together with her laughter and positive energy.