Wife Of Chinese Rights Lawyer Under House Arrest

The wife of a detained Chinese human rights lawyer who had nearly completed a 100-kilometre march to highlight her husband's plight said she had been placed under house arrest on Wednesday.

"On April 11, 2018, trapped at home by forty or fifty people. A friend who came to visit was stopped and beaten. I can only climb out the window to shout," Li Wenzu wrote on her Twitter page on Wednesday afternoon.

The post included a video of Li sitting on a window ledge shouting and angrily gesturing to a crowd below.

In the video she described the plight of her husband Wang Quanzhang, an attorney who represented political activists and disappeared in a 2015 police sweep.

"He went to court for ordinary people. Now he's been arrested for a thousand days without [us] knowing if he is alive or dead. I went to find my husband," she said, referencing her march.

A close friend of Li's confirmed that she was "being controlled" by state security officers. "She still can't leave her house," the friend said, requesting anonymity.

Li's husband Wang has been charged with "subversion of state power" but authorities have blocked family-appointed lawyers from visiting him.

As well as representing activists he also acted for victims of land seizures.

His wife and a small group of supporters set off last week on a march from Beijing to the "No. 2 Detention Centre" in the northeastern city of Tianjin, where officials last said Wang was being held.

On Monday, shortly after reaching Tianjin, police officers detained at least two members of the group for several hours and forced Li and her friends to return to Beijing.

"They tried to make me give up on this march to Tianjin...I did not agree. I said that I have the freedom to go where I want," Li said.

China's ruling Communist party has repeatedly pledged to implement the "rule of law", but analysts say cases like Wang's highlight the stark limits of those promises.

"This sort of display of thuggery undermines the credibility of the Chinese criminal justice system," Amnesty International China researcher William Nee, said.

Wang was one of more than 200 Chinese human rights lawyers and activists who were detained or questioned in the summer of 2015, the largest clampdown on the legal profession in recent history. (AFP)