[JURIST] Beijing prosecutors on Monday said that they received from police a letter of recommendation to bring charges against Xu Zhiyong [BBC report; JURIST report] for disrupting public order. Xu was arrested in August for organizing demonstrations and campaigning for Chinese officials to reveal their wealth, in an attempt to combat corruption. Xu is a law lecturer at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications [academic website] and founder of the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng) [Economist report]. Xu had also advocated for rural children’s right to be educated in cities where many live with migrant worker parents.

The detainment of Chinese activists has been a recurrent human rights issue in China, along with accusations of corruption within the Chinese government. In August Chinese writer, lawyer and human rights advocate Yang Maodong, commonly known by his pen-name Guo Feixiong [HRIC profile], became the second leader, following Xu, of the New Citizens movement to be arrested on suspicion of disrupting the peace. In June a Chinese court in Huairou sentenced [JURIST report] Liu Hui, brother-in-law of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy activist Liu Xiaobo [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], to 11 years in prison on charges of fraud. In May China’s Nanjing Intermediate People’s Court issued a life sentence [JURIST report] to Huang Sheng, the former provincial deputy governor of Shandong Province, for accepting almost $2 million in bribes from 21 organizations and numerous individuals between 1998 and 2011.