The 709 Crackdown (Chinese: 中国709维权律师大抓捕事件; pinyin: Zhōngguó 709 wéiquán lǜshī dàzhuābǔ shìjiàn; lit.
'China 709 mass arrest of civil rights lawyers incident' or 709案 '709 Case' for short) was a nationwide crackdown on Chinese lawyers and human rights activists instigated during the summer of 2015.
[1] Yaqiu Wang of Human Rights Watch commented that "the 709 crackdown dealt a terrible blow to China's rights-defense movement, which significantly contracted as rights lawyers were jailed, disbarred or placed under surveillance".
[3] Some of the notable people affected by the crackdown are listed below.
On 17 June 2020, according to a report from Deutsche Welle, Yu Wensheng, who had defended Wang Quanzhang and publicly called for the removal of Xi as well as for reforms in the legal and political systems, was sentenced to four years in prison and deprived of political rights for three years.