A prominent human rights lawyer who called for political reform in mainland China has been sentenced to four years in prison for subversion.

Yu Wensheng, 47, was convicted in Xuzhou of “inciting subversion of state power” after penning an open letter in 2018 calling for constitutional reform. On top of the jail sentence, he would be deprived of political rights for three years.

Yu has already been detained for more than two years for “obstructing the duties of public officers” over the same letter.

His wife, Xu Yan, told Apple Daily on Wednesday that the trial and sentencing were both carried out in secret. His relatives and lawyers were kept in the dark, she said.

In a tearful voice message released to the media, Xu said: “They started the trial in secret and now they have passed the sentence in secret. This is against the law. They did not tell the family or anyone else. They don’t care about the law. Is this what they call the rule of law?”

She appealed to the international community to help the family, saying the bullying tactics of the Communist Party of China must be stopped.

As a lawyer, Yu previously represented another high-profile activist, Wang Quanzhang, who was released in April after more than four years in prison for subversion. Xu worried that her husband’s situation was “even more difficult” than Wang’s.

Speaking to Apple Daily from Beijing, Xu said that she was upset and angry. She said she had been informed that Yu would lodge an appeal, for which the application must be made within 10 days after sentencing.

She said Yu’s lawyers would visit the court in Xuzhou — 700 km from Beijing — to handle the case. But she worried about making it to the court herself as the capital had stepped up quarantine measures following a new wave of coronavirus cases. “I will try my best to be there,” she said.

Yu used to be a commercial lawyer and previously said he became an activist after being targeted by the authorities for his involvement in human rights cases. He was detained for 99 days in 2014 for representing a supporter of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement — a three-month Occupy protest seen as the prelude of the ongoing social unrest in the semi-autonomous city.

“I had no option at all,” he once said. “Don’t ever expect the CCP to change.”

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