Detained human rights lawyer, Wang Yu, on Chinese state TV informed of 'failed attempt to smuggle son overseas'
Distraught civil rights lawyer and husband, detained for months, are filmed being informed of 'failed attempt to smuggle son out of China'
Human rights lawyer Wang Yu and her husband Bao Longjun, who have been detained incommunicado for three months, were shown on state television in a distressed state yesterday, condemning a failed attempt to smuggle their teenage son out of China.
But a San Francisco-based family friend, Liang Bo, who was to receive 16-year-old Bao Zhuoxuan in the US, said friends were trying to help the boy escape round-the-clock surveillance and his parents had been misled by the authorities.
State broadcaster CCTV yesterday aired footage of the couple, filmed separately, talking emotionally about their son, who was caught after he entered Myanmar earlier this month while trying to flee abroad with the help of two activists.
After the plan failed, the boy was taken back to China to stay with his grandparents and is now under 24-hour surveillance, according to Liang.
CCTV and Xinhua depicted the incident as an illegal smuggling operation that transferred the boy from Inner Mongolia to Yunnan province then into Myanmar. The plan was to take him to Thailand then to "a Western country".
