Children Bao Zhuoxuan | ||
Wang Yu (born 1 May 1971) is a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer. She was arrested by Chinese authorities in 2015 when China initiated a crackdown against human rights attorneys. She is charged with inciting subversion of state power which is a serious offense in China carrying a life sentence. Wang is a lawyer with the Fengrui law firm in Beijing. That law firm has been targeted by the government in its crackdown, which arrested two lawyers and one intern there in addition to Wang and her husband, Bao Longjun.
Before her conversion to a human rights lawyer, Wang Yu was a commercial lawyer until an incident at a Tianjin train station in 2008. At that time she got into an argument with rail employees because she was denied entry onto a train even though she had a ticket. In a Kafkaesque turn of events, she was charged with "intentional assault" and was imprisoned for more than 2 years. While in prison, she learned how prisoners were mistreated and tortured. When she was released in 2011, her conversion to a human rights lawyer was complete.
Since then, she became part of China's human rights movement. Her clients have included Ilham Tohti, a well-known Uyghur intellectual, the women’s rights group known as the "Feminists Five," and the banned Falun Gong spiritual group. It was her use of social media to champion her causes that eventually led to her arrest on the subversion charges. In 2015, the government's Xinhua News Agency published a piece designed to tarnish her reputation, saying, "This arrogant woman with a criminal record turned overnight to a lawyer, blabbering about the rule of law, human rights, and justice, and roaming around under the flag of 'rights defense.'"
Wang Yu's human rights work is highlighted in the 2016 documentary directed by Nanfu Wang, Hooligan Sparrow. On 4 June 2016, Wang Yu was awarded the 21st prestigious Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize also called "The award given by lawyers to a lawyer".