Brother: Chinese activist held for tax evasion

BEIJING — A leading Chinese legal activist detained by authorities last week has been accused of tax evasion, his brother said Tuesday.

Xu Zhiyong, a prominent legal scholar who co-founded the Gongmeng legal aid organization, was taken from his Beijing home about 5 a.m. last Wednesday by police. At the time, it was unclear why he was being held.

On Tuesday, his brother Xu Zhihong told The Associated Press that officials from the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications, where Xu Zhiyong taught, said they were notified that the scholar was being detained for tax evasion.

Xu’s detention comes as China has stepped up an official push to restrain activist lawyers. Last month, more than 50 Beijing lawyers, many of whom focus on politically sensitive human rights issues, had their licenses revoked.

China is gearing up for the 60th anniversary of the communist nation’s founding on Oct. 1 — a period when dissent is not tolerated.

The People’s Congress of Haidian district in Beijing, a local body that Xu has been elected to, said it had approved his detention, his brother said. The approval is required because Xu is an elected official.

About two weeks ago, government officials shut down Gongmeng, also known as the Open Constitution Initiative, a legal aid and research organization that worked on many of China’s groundbreaking cases.

Most recently, Gongmeng lawyers represented parents whose children were sickened last year after drinking milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine that was blamed for the deaths of six babies and made nearly 300,000 others ill.

The closure came after Beijing’s tax bureau fined the group 1.4 million yuan ($200,000) because it said Gongmeng had failed to pay its taxes.

The scholar was scheduled to have a hearing with the tax bureau on Jul 30, the day after he was taken away in a dawn raid. His brother said he believed Xu Zhiyong was innocent of wrongdoing.

“I believe my brother would never commit any crime,” said Xu Zhihong. “He never thinks about himself and just wants to help others. The last time I talked to him on the phone was July 25. He told me that he didn’t do anything wrong. He said ‘Don’t worry about me.’”

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Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS day tax meeting was scheduled.)