New Delhi : A motley group of rights activists, including LGBT activists, held a rally here on Wednesday to demand that China free five women who were taken into custody this month for apparently campaigning against sexual harassment on buses in the country.
The group, including gay rights activist and academic Ashley Tellis, shouted slogans in Jantar Mantar area, demanding that Beijing release the five women – Tingting Li, Man Wang, Tingting Wei, Rongrong Wu and Churan Zheng.
The women were apparently distributing pamphlets and stickers with slogans bearing slogans like “Stop sexual harassment” and calling for police to arrest molesters, when they were whisked away on March 6 to a detention centre in Beijing.
The women were planning demonstrations in Beijing and Guangzhou ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8.
The group of protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar included Rituparna Bora, a feminist and queer rights activist, Mridu of the Citizens Collective Against Sexual Assault and NGO Kriya.
Some of the activists wore masks representing the five detained women, with a banner in the backdrop demanding that China release the women forthwith.
The activists said India was also “becoming like China” through its crackdown on civil society.
Tellis, addressing the gathering, said: “The state is usually very scared about sexuality issues, including in India.”
He said that in India there was a crackdown on civil society and rights activists, including from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community.
The activists, in a statement, said: “20 years ago, China hosted the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, signed the Beijing Platform for Action and made a commitment to promote women’s rights and gender equality. What the Chinese government has done to the five young feminists is unacceptable and violates the spirit of the Beijing Platform for Action and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
“We stand in solidarity with these five women whose whereabouts are not known and demand their immediate release. The coercion of women human rights defenders happens everywhere and we must send a message that this is unacceptable,” they said.
The arrest of the five women has drawn criticism from international rights groups, the European Union and the US.
“We expect the Chinese authorities to release them without delay and to allow them immediate access to legal assistance and to their families,” a spokesman for EU Foreign Affairs and Security Policy said in a statement from Brussels.
The US has also called on China to release the five activists immediately.