Visiting Professor Yang Zhanqing was quoted in a Radio Free Asia article about how feminists are treated in China.
Yang Zhanqing, a visiting law professor at Fordham University in the U.S., said the eviction of the women forms part of a crackdown on civil society groups and non-government organizations (NGOs) that began in 2014.
She said the Overseas NGO Management Law, passed in April 2016, enables police to engage in daily supervision and monitoring of foreign-funded civil society and rights groups operating in China.
Under the new law, Chinese police are now able to enter the premises of foreign NGOs and seize documents and other information, as well as canceling any activities and imposing administrative detention on its workers.
“It doesn’t matter what they try to do; it’s all illegal,” Yang said. “In the past, such activities would still be able to go ahead [in spite of police]harassment.”
“But now the authorities take a zero-tolerance approach to anyone who organizes any kind of rights activism,” Yang said. “People in the third sector have become ‘unstable factors’, in the eyes of the government.”
The overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network, which collates reports from groups inside China, called on the ruling Chinese Communist Party to improve the treatment of Chinese women.
“Women in China face widespread discrimination and abuses both in their public and personal lives,” the group said in a statement on its website on Friday. “Physical violence against women remains common. Such incidents often go on uninvestigated, and suspects continue to enjoy impunity.”