Police in China are keeping up their harassment of prominent rights lawyers, putting pressure on recently evicted Wang Quanzhang and his family, slapping a travel ban on Li Heping and his family, while denying rights attorney Xie Yang a phone call with his sick father.

And a court in the central city of Changsha recently denied detained rights lawyer Xie Yang a video meeting with his ailing 90-year-old father, who is terminally ill with COVID-19.

"The lawyer asked angrily whether the judges of the Changsha Intermediate People's Court were raised by their parents," the China Rights Lawyers Twitter account said of the June 7 hearing.

Xie's U.S.-based ex-wife Chen Guiqiu told Radio Free Asia in a recent interview that her father-in-law Xie Huicheng had been in hospital with a high fever for days at the time of the request.

"Xie Yang is a very filial son, and the old man really wanted to see him before he dies," Chen said. "The court just came up with various excuses to refuse."

Xie is currently being held in the Changsha No. 1 Detention Center, awaiting trial for "incitement to subvert state power," and recently told his visiting attorney that he has been tortured while in detention.

Chen said the court's decision not to allow him to video call his dying father could be a form of retaliation, or a way to silence Xie.

U.S.-based rights lawyer Wu Shaoping said that while there was no good legal reason to deny such a request, the ruling Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate arbiter of its citizens' rights, not the law.

"There was no reason to reject a humanitarian request of this kind," Wu said. "They use [such requests] as a way of controlling suspects [to elicit a 'confession']."