A recent crackdown on lawyers, human rights defenders and their relatives by Chinese authorities is testament to the further restriction of people's freedoms under the regime of President Xi Jinping. Some of the people who were detained are still being held. Given that they are not radical activists who commit themselves to subversive activities, Beijing should quickly release them.

As of last Tuesday, 159 people were arrested, detained or questioned in 24 Chinese cities and provinces. According to the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, a Hong Kong-based advocacy group, although 135 people had been released, 10 were still detained and the whereabouts of 14 others were unknown. The crackdown on the human rights activists is believed to be unprecedented in size and scale.

Among those detained were four lawyers from Beijing Fengrui, a law firm that specializes in human rights cases, an assistant and the husband of one of the lawyers. Two days earlier, the People's Daily, the organ of the Chinese Communist Party, said that the law firm is a "major criminal gang" that "organized, planned and hyped more than 40 sensitive cases since 2012, seriously disturbing social order."