By VANESSA PIAO JUNE 5, 2015 7:47 AM June 5, 2015 7:47 am
Portraits of the five feminists who were detained in March displayed at a protest on their behalf in Hong Kong: Li Tingting and Wei Tingting (top, left to right), and Wang Man, Wu Rongrong and Zheng Churan (bottom, left to right). Ms. Wu said she has shut down her women’s rights organization.Credit Tyrone Siu/Reuters
A women’s rights organization linked to two of the five Chinese feminists whose detention in March set off an international outcry ceased operations after pressure from the authorities led most of its staff members to quit and funding dried up.
Wu Rongrong, one of the five detained women and the founder of the Weizhiming Women’s Center in Hangzhou, China, said she had no choice but to shut down the organization on May 29 after four of her six full-time employees and most of the center’s volunteers left after they and their families came under police investigation
Zheng Churan, another of the five activists detained just before International Women’s Day, when they planned to campaign against sexual harassment on public transport, had served as Weizhiming’s project manager since its founding in August 2014, Ms. Wu said in an interview on Friday. Ms. Zheng had explained that she could no longer work for the group because of the tremendous pressure she felt while in detention and since the women’s release in mid-April.
Ms. Wu said that work at Weizhiming was largely suspected after she was detained on March 7 and the organization’s office was searched, as most staff members left and those who remained feared that working on advocacy campaigns could lead to further detentions. The group’s funding, which came mostly from local and overseas foundations, ran out, Ms. Wu said, and they could no longer pay their rent after May.
“I thought things should be fine as there weren’t a lot of questions about Weizhiming,” she said, referring to police interrogations. “But after I was released, we found it was just impossible for us to do our work.”
Ms. Zheng, reached by text message, declined to be interviewed.
Conditions for nongovernmental organizations in China have grown more restrictive since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013. The country is considering legislation that would put all nongovernmental organizations, domestic and foreign, under closer supervision and would limit foreign funding for local groups. On May 29, the Communist Party announced that a Politburo meeting had decided that party groups should be set up in all social, cultural and economic organizations.
The Beijing office of Yirenping, another organization associated with the detained feminists, was raided in late March after it called for the women’s release. Both Ms. Wu and Ms. Zhu formerly worked at Yirenping, which fights discrimination against people infected with H.I.V. or hepatitis, or with physical disabilities. Li Tingting, who was also among the five, still works there. In April, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the group was “suspected of violating the law.”
On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the committee working on Beijing’s bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics was asked how the crackdown on Yirenping could be reconciled with the anti-discrimination pledge Beijing signed when it applied to host the games. She denied any knowledge of the group, Reuters reported.
Ms. Wu, 30, was denied medical treatment for hepatitis for nearly two weeks and was forced to sleep on the floor while in custody at the Beijing Haidian Detention Center, where the five women were held. After she was released and returned to Hangzhou in late April, she was harshly interrogated by the police, which left her “emotionally broken,” her husband has said.
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