By Jerome A. Cohen

Here is an update on the weird and fascinating “non-release release” (NRR) of the famous, disbarred human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who is being prevented from returning to his home and family in Beijing and kept in his former residence in Jinan (the police having ousted the tenant who was renting from Wang) but allowed some contacts with his sister, a friend and some non-PRC media.

A local Jinan police station official told his sister that Wang is required to stay there because he is under sentence of “deprivation of political rights” (DPR) for the five years after his “release” from almost five years in prison. This would be a far-fetched interpretation of the criminal punishment of DPR, as I pointed out in my last week’s pre-release op-ed in the SCMP.

Wang’s tenacious and brave wife, Li Wenzu, has openly ridiculed this DPR argument in a tweet that has evoked a large variety of interesting responses. Her evolving and well-publicized challenge to the administration of criminal justice will undoubtedly lead to a clarification of the scope of DPR in the next revision of China’s criminal legislation. The fuss made over Ai Weiwei’s illegal detention in 2011 led to a 2012 revision of criminal legislation relating to “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL), which the police have subsequently abused by their unjustified nullification of the limits on RSDL imposed by the new provisions.