Chinese justice - Activist lawyer who defended Ai Weiwei charged with 'provoking trouble' // Teng Biao - What will this crackdown on activists do to China’s nascent civil society?
A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who used to act for
artist Ai
Weiwei has been charged with inciting ethnic hatred and “picking quarrels
and provoking trouble” – offences that carry a 10-year jail sentence. Pu Zhiqiang has been in detention in China for more than a
year, with no access to his family, but he has been allowed visits from his
lawyers, including this month. He
was arrested in 2014 in the runup to the 25th anniversary of the
Tiananmen Square massacre, after attending a seminar about the crackdown with
journalists, lawyers, scholars and activists. The government had until 20 May
this year to send his case to trial or release him.
As well as representing Ai, Pu has worked on a
number of high-profile cases, recently, including a Tibetan
environmentalist and woman who was sent to a labour camp for protesting against
light sentences handed down to her daughter’s rapists. “Do the Beijing police think they can make us believe Pu
Zhiqiang is being charged for anything else than being a courageous lawyer?”
Nicholas Becquelin, Amnesty International’s regional director for east Asia,
tweeted.
The charges come on the eve of a visit by the US secretary
of state, John Kerry. China
rebuked the US when it called for Pu’s release earlier this month, and
the charges may add to strain on a trip already complicated by tensions over
the South China Sea. Pu’s lawyer said two of the original charges his client
faced had been dropped, and they expect a verdict in about three months. Time
served would count towards any sentence. “We argued that there aren’t
substantial cases for all four charges, and the procuratorate has partially
taken our argument into consideration,” said Pu’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping.
All the charges are thought to be based on about 30
outspoken blogposts. He described harsh government controls in restive Xinjiang
and Tibet as “ridiculous national policy”, and also attacked a now-disgraced
security tsar for abuse of power, before his downfall. A notice from prosecutors reads: “Defendant Pu Zhiqiang has
used the internet to publish posts that incited ethnic hatred on many occasions
which has caused serious consequences. He publicly insulted others and
disturbed social order, which has caused serious consequences.”
The Beijing No 2 intermediate people’s procuratorate posted
the notice on its microblog. Pu’s lawyers said they expect to get the
indictment with details of the charges next week. He is expected to contest the charges, according to another
lawyer acting for Pu, who saw his client on 8 May. “Pu was in good state both
physically and mentally,” he said. “He rejected all four charges against him
last time we met and I think he would still hold the same position.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/15/lawyer-pu-zhiqiang-ai-weiwei-charged-provoking-trouble-china
Teng Biao: What will this crackdown on activists do to China’s nascent civil society?
Teng Biao: What will this crackdown on activists do to China’s nascent civil society?
China’s civil society has little cause for optimism in 2015.
The country is now seeing the worst crackdown on lawyers, activists and
scholars in decades.
Since Xi Jinping became China’s leader in 2012, at least 500
human rights activists and dissidents have been arrested and sentenced to
prison. Rights defenders, minorities, NGOs, the internet, underground churches,
universities, journalists and writers have all suffered severe controls and
persecution. The authorities have taken their policy of “stability maintenance”
a step further – to eliminate China’s nascent civil society altogether. Xi is
seeking to destroy the people’s ability to resist by stopping the rise of
activist leaders and uprooting all the nodes of civil society, which has been
quietly growing for the past 10 years.
The Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti, rights lawyer Tang Jingling, activist Xu Zhiyong and many others have all been arrested or jailed. Even
so, almost no one would have thought that renowned human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang too would lose his freedom. He enjoyed people’s
love and respect, and had found ways to bolster both his cases and his own
reputation even through state-owned media outlets. Pu has a knack for hitting the nail on the head when
analysing problems, and great foresight for larger issues. He is generous in
aiding friends facing difficulties. Tall, handsome, with a strong voice, he
fought evil with fury and righteousness in court. In a democratic system, he
would have been a charismatic leader. Yet in the blink of an eye he became a
political prisoner charged with the crimes of inciting subversion of state
power, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, illegally obtaining personal
information and inciting ethnic hatred.
I have known Pu for over a decade. In 2003, after
successfully calling for the abolition of an unconstitutional system of
detention known as custody and repatriation, I was filled with hope and decided
to devote myself to the fight for human rights. Pu persuaded me to join his law
firm. Because of my activities, I was eventually expelled from the university
where I worked and disbarred, “disappeared” and tortured. But Pu was never
persecuted, despite his boldness.
Pu was involved with the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement in
1989, staying in the square right up until the very end, despite the obvious
danger, and was one of the witnesses of the massacre. When writer Tan Zuoren was indicted for his articles on the subject, Pu
tried to call former premier Li Peng and Beijing mayor Chen Xitong to give
evidence. He defended Tibetan environmentalist Karma Samdrup, artist Ai Weiwei, and Tang Hui – the mother sent to a labour camp for peacefully
petitioning against the sentences given to her daughter’s rapists. He played an
important role in the successful campaign to abolish the notorious Reeducation
Through Labor system, just one of China’s many forms of extrajudicial
detention, and was one of the initiators of Charter 08, the call for democratic reforms which landed Nobel
peace prizewinner Liu Xiaoboin prison.
On the highly sensitive issues of Xinjiang and Tibet, he
called the government’s heavy-handed suppression in Xinjiang and Tibet a
“ridiculous national policy” and amazed people by openly calling out Zhou
Yongkang, the party’s former security tsar, for his abuse of power in
implementing the “stability maintenance” policy. These were all extremely
dangerous actions for someone to take in China, but he shrugged off my
fears. Three of the four charges against Pu are based merely on around 30 posts
on his microblog. He attributed his ability to avoid persecution to his
understanding of politics and his tact. He was so deeply moved by The Lives of Others, a
film about the work of the secret police in East Germany, that he purchased
many copies of the DVD and handed them out to secret police, hoping this would
help them to retain a shred of their humanity. When they illegally put him
under house arrest he still tried to calmly reason with them, knowing that to a
certain degree these people who did evil things were also victims of the
system.
But in the end his judgment and tact were of no avail. Under
such a dictatorship, any person with a conscience who puts his or her ideals
into practice must be prepared to be arrested. On 3 May 2014, Pu Zhiqiang and a
dozen or so scholars held a private symposium to commemorate the 25th
anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. He was arrested shortly afterwards. So on the one hand, we see the inherent illegitimacy of the
existing regime and the abuse of civil rights that is continuously creating
conflicts. But on the other there is the expansion of the internet,
marketisation, and globalisation, the rise of civic awareness and social
movements. The existing ideology continues to lose its appeal, the environment
is worsening day by day, and the existing model of development is facing
growing crises.
Despite the pressure, civil society in China is prepared to
fight for its survival and growth. There will be detours, setbacks, low points
and sacrifices, and more people such as Pu will pay a high price. But the motivation
for this harsh crackdown is also the evidence that it will not stop China from
moving towards becoming a free, democratic country.
