On 12 January 2022, the Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau in Guangdong province sent a notice to the family of human rights defender and 2015 Front Line Defender Award laureate Guo Feixiong (aka Yang Maodong), informing them that the human rights defender has been formally arrested on suspicion of “inciting subversion of State power” under Article 105(2) of China’s Criminal Law. According to the arrest notice, he is currently being detained at the Guangzhou Municipal No. 1 Detention Centre.

Guo Feixiong is a well-known human rights defender in China, who has previously spent 11 years in detention due to his human rights work. The human rights defender has been missing since 5 December 2021, after sending a text message to close friends saying he was under police custody. The formal arrest by the Guangzhou police came less than two days after the human rights defender’s wife, Zhang Qing, died after a year-long battle with cancer on 10 January 2022, in Maryland, United States. The authorities imposed an exit ban on Guo Feixiong in January 2021 and barred him from boarding a flight at the Shanghai airport to the United States to care for his wife Zhang Qing. It is unclear whether the human rights defender has been informed of his wife’s death while in police custody.

Under article 105(2) of China’s Criminal Law, those who incite “others by spreading rumors or slanders or any other means to subvert the State power or overthrow the socialist system” are subject to “fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years, criminal detention, public surveillance or deprivation of political rights”.

In April 2021, UN human rights experts jointly wrote to the Chinese government to reiterate their “alarm at the continued use of national security provisions of the Criminal Code that have been used to restrict the rights to freedom of expression, of association, and of peaceful assembly.” They were particularly concerned about the ill-defined terms of Article 105, the length of imprisonment stipulated in it as well as other national security-related provisions included in China’s Criminal Law. In a joint report published in December 2021, Front Line Defenders and partner organisations drew attention to the Chinese government’s frequent use of travel ban to punish human rights defenders and their family members.

Front Line Defenders condemns the Chinese government’s inhumane and unlawful refusal to respect Guo Feixiong’s right to freedom of movement for over 12 months, thus denying him an opportunity to see his dying wife. His formal arrest adds to the repeated violations against him over the last 16 years, including two prison sentences amounting to 11 years. Front Line Defenders urges the relevant authorities in China to immediately release Guo Feixiong, to drop the charges against him, and to facilitate his safe travel to the United States as soon as possible in order to attend his late wife’s affairs and comfort his two grieving children.