By Jerome A. Cohen

Today tells the sad tale of two leading democratic figures named XU, each an important figure in China’s legal world and each now confined in different ways in the PRC.

I had hoped that Xu Zhiyong might escape from the PRC via an underground railway, but, having been caught yesterday, he may now be destined for a second long prison term.

Xu Zhangrun, the courageous Tsinghua University law professor, is suffering another form of detention — what is in effect solitary confinement at home, cut off from both his immediate surroundings and the world while nominally not formally detained.

Each recently issued a bold and scathing attack on the repression of the Xi Jinping years. One hopes that amidst the current turmoil their calls for freedoms of expression, democracy and establishment of a constitutional system might have been heard at home as well as abroad before being extinguished by the regime.