Wang Quanzhang (, born 15 February 1976) is a Chinese human rights lawyer from Wulian County, Shandong. He was arrested in August 2015 as part of the "709 crackdown" on human rights lawyers instigated by General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping, and after being held incommunicado for three years, he was put on trial for subversion of state power in December 2018.
Wang was released from prison on 4 April 2020 and was moved by authorities to his former residence in Jinan. The government has stated that Wang is being quarantined in precaution to the novel coronavirus, however it is feared that the virus has been used as an excuse to keep him under house arrest.
Career
Wang is a lawyer of the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm. He graduated from the School of Law at Shandong University in 2000, and worked for a time at the Shandong Provincial Library. In 2003, Wang passed the National Judicial Exam, and in 2007, formally began his lawyer career in Jinan, Shandong. He later moved to Beijing, where he specialized in human rights cases, defending victims subjected to land expropriation, labour camp mistreatment, and prison abuse. He also defended Falun Gong practitioners who have been subjected to ongoing nationwide persecution.
Wang also worked for the NGO Chinese Urgent Action Working Group (), also known as 'China Action', which was co-founded in 2009 by Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin to assist, train and help Chinese lawyers, journalists and small NGOs work to promote the rule of law and to protect human rights in China. Dahlin was arrested in China in January 2016, and subsequently deported.
Harassment, arrest, and disappearance
Detention in April 2013
On 3 April 2013, after having defended a Falun Gong practitioner in a hearing at the Jingjiang City People's Court, Wang was detained for allegedly "disrupting court order". It was noted that prior to Wang's detention, he had been frequently denied access to his client since taking on the case. The defendant's family, who were waiting outside the court, were given no information about this incident. At 5 p.m on 4 April, the court put a statement on its website to inform that Wang had been placed under judicial custody. The statement mentions that Wang's violation was "serious", but it does not state what Wang had done.
Beating received in June 2015
On 18 June 2015, Wang defended some Falun Gong practitioners on trial in Liaocheng, Shandong, but the presiding judge Wang Yingjun () constantly hindered his attempts to present legal arguments. Eventually the judge ordered him to be evicted from the court and he was then beaten by court officials.
Arrest and disappearance in August 2015
In August 2015 Wang was arrested as part of a nationwide crackdown on lawyers and human rights activists instigated by Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping, known as the 709 crackdown, as it started on July 9, 2015. After his arrest, the authorities gave a notice of arrest to his wife, Li Wenzu (), but refused to provide any information on where he was being held or to allow any access to him by his family or by a lawyer. For more than three years no information on his whereabouts or even whether he was dead or alive was forthcoming. By summer 2017, all the lawyers and activists arrested during the July 2015 crackdown, except for Wang, had either been released or sentenced to prison. Only the fate of Wang remained unknown.
Many of those arrested during the 2015 crackdown made forced confessions of guilt in court or on television, so Wang's wife, Li Wenzu, suggested that the reason why her husband had not been put on trial was that he refused to make any confession of guilt: "I think it might be because my husband hasn't compromised at all; that's why his case remains unsolved."
In April 2018, in order to publicize the disappearance of her husband a thousand days earlier, Li Wenzu embarked on a twelve-day walk from Beijing to Tianjin, where she thought Wang may have been held. Li was accompanied on her march to Tianjin by Wang Qiaoling, the wife of lawyer Li Heping, who had also been arrested as part of the crackdown, and had been given a suspended sentence in April 2017. Li Wenzu was stopped from completing the march by the authorities.