That law firm has been targeted by the government in its crackdown, which arrested two lawyers and one intern there in addition to Wang and her husband, Bao Longjun.
[3] Late in 2016, Chinese authorities released Wang Yu on bail after she was almost certainly coerced to give a televised confession in which she denounced her colleagues and suggested that her human rights work was the result of foreign activists out to smear China.
In 2015, the government's Xinhua News Agency published a piece designed to tarnish her reputation, saying, "This arrogant woman with a criminal record turned overnight to a lawyer, blabbering about the rule of law, human rights, and justice, and roaming around under the flag of 'rights defense.
We recognize her important work to protect human rights and to advocate that the Chinese government respect the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession and observe fair trial and due process standards—all principles guaranteed under Chinese and international law and critical to sustaining progress toward rule of law," said ABA President Paulette Brown.
[12] On June 11, 2015, Radio Free Asia reported that Xinhua News and other Chinese Communist Party media outlets simultaneously published four anonymously authored articles criticizing lawyer Wang Yu.
Some suggested Wang Yu was targeted due to her defense of detained human rights activist Tu Fu (Wu Gan).