BEIJING: Chinese state television has aired a confession made in detention by a Swedish co-founder of a human rights group, who said he had trained and funded unlicensed lawyers in China to take on cases against the government “in clear violation of the law.”

In a 10-minute segment aired late Tuesday and early Wednesday, state broadcaster CCTV detailed how Peter Dahlin established an activist organization in Hong Kong with the help of employees from the human rights-focused Fengrui Law Firm in Beijing, whose lawyers have been recently charged with subverting state power.

Dahlin’s group has called the confession “apparently forced” and rejected accusations that it manufactured or escalated conflicts inside China.

In the past year, China’s government under President Xi Jinping has aggressively cracked down on the country’s increasingly assertive legal rights groups, framing their advocacy as a destabilizing force to state security.

Authorities formally charged four well-known Fengrui lawyers last week, six months after hundreds of lawyers nationwide were rounded up and accused of stirring up hostility toward the government and manufacturing cases to enrich themselves.

Dahlin was arrested Jan. 3 on his way to Beijing’s international airport, becoming the first foreign worker to be entangled in the crackdown that has drawn widespread condemnation from foreign governments and overseas human rights groups, which have urged Beijing to abide by its promise to rule by law.