709 crackdown

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The 709 Crackdown (Chinese: 中国709维权律师大抓捕事件; pinyin: Zhōngguó 709 wéiquán lǜshī dàzhuābǔ shìjiàn; lit. 'China 709 mass arrest of civil rights lawyers incident' or 709案 '709 Case' for short) was a nationwide crackdown on Chinese lawyers and human rights activists instigated during the summer of 2015. It is known as the "709 crackdown" as it started on 9 July 2015.^[1]

Yaqiu Wang of Human Rights Watch commented that "the 709 crackdown dealt a terrible blow to China's rights-defense movement, which significantly contracted as rights lawyers were jailed, disbarred or placed under surveillance".^[2]