A Chinese publisher who voiced support for dissident scholar Xu Zhangrun was barred from meeting her lawyers for at least three days after her arrest last week, according to her lawyer.

Geng Xiaonan and her husband Qin Zhen, who together run Ruiya Books, have been unable to meet their lawyers since their arrest in Beijing last Saturday for allegedly “running an illicit business.”

Geng’s lawyers on Monday morning sought to meet her in custody but were told by prison officers that the earliest meeting time slot was early next week. This was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and an online booking could be made beforehand, one of the lawyers Shang Baojun told Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK.

Hours later, the lawyers were told that they could meet Geng on Tuesday after a vacancy was found in the prison’s visit quota for that day, Shang said. They had already submitted an application for Geng’s bail and were waiting for a reply, Shang added.

Beijing police alleged that the couple had been printing and selling illegal materials, and a large amount of illegal publications were found in their possession.

Geng voiced support for Xu earlier this year when the former Tsinghua University law professor was detained by authorities following a series of essays he wrote that were critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

Xu wrote an article calling for Geng’s release last Saturday and likened the publisher to a Decembrist, a group of Russian army officers who mounted a doomed rebellion against Czar Nicolas I in 1825. Although the Decembrists failed and were forced into exile or executed, the revolt was widely seen as the beginning of movement toward liberalism and the end of Russian autocracy.

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