July 9 marked the start of Beijing’s mass persecution directed at China’s human rights lawyers in 2015, called the “709 crackdown.” On its sixth anniversary, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken vowed that the United States will always buttress them to build a more just, stable, and prosperous Chinese society. The persecution targeted hundreds of human rights lawyers, dissidents, and their families across China’s 23 provinces. These voices for justice were subjected to torture, televised confessions, mass state-sanctioned kidnapping where targets are held incommunicado and likely tortured in the communist party’s “black jails”—a practice euphemistically called “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location”—and other forms of mistreatment. The 709 action is widely viewed as a judicial leap backward for China. In a July 8 statement, Blinken honored the Chinese lawyers and human rights defenders who have been unjustly detained, interrogated, and imprisoned by authorities of the Chinese Communist Party since July 9, 2015. He called …
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