Multiple American citizens have been in Chinese police custody since June while their mother has been in a secret prison due to alleged connections to their estranged father and husband, who is wanted in China for fraud, according to The New York Times.
Victor Liu, 19, a student at Georgetown University, and his sister Cynthia Liu, 27, a New York City consultant, were reportedly stopped at an airport in China as subjects of what is called an “exit ban,” according to TheNYT report.
#Communist regime #China – hold two #USA citizens Victor and Cynthia Liu using “exit ban,” who are children of man sought by Communist authorities, and their #American mother, Sandra Han, is held in “black jail” secret site.https://t.co/m3SY8xsTYN pic.twitter.com/gtk2MwyjLo
— R.E.A.L Human Rights (@realhumanrights) November 26, 2018
The children’s mother Sandra Han, 51, is reportedly being held in what is referred to as a “black jail,” a kind of secret, unmarked prison the Chinese government uses to hold prisoners without charging them, according to Human Rights Watch.
These jails are one of many kinds of shadowy prisons used to hold political dissidents or other atypical suspects in crimes against China, according to NPR. (RELATED: Chinese Internet Star Taken Into Custody For Mocking National Anthem)
The children are allegedly being held without any supposition of guilt or attachment to their father Liu Changming, who is on the Chinese most-wanted list for fraudulent real estate transactions adding up to $1.4 billion.
Cynthia referred to their detention as “a crude form of human collateral” and stated she has no contact with her father and no connection to his alleged crimes, reported TheNYT.
“The investigative officers have made abundantly clear that neither my brother nor I am under any form of investigation,” Cynthia wrote in August in a letter to National Security Advisor John Bolton, according to TheNYT.
Chinese officials have chosen to cite the mother and children as Chinese citizens while defending their arrest.
“The people you mentioned all own legal and valid identity documents as Chinese citizens. Because they are suspected of economic crimes, they are restricted from exiting the country by the Chinese police in accordance with the law,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, according to TheNYT.
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