Chinese activist Liu Feiyue given five years' jail for 'inciting subversion'

By Dilip -
The founder of a prominent Chinese civil and human rights website has been sentenced to five years in prison for inciting state subversion, according to human rights organisations. Liu Feiyue created and ran the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch website, which covers a range of rights issues including protests, police abuses and government corruption – sensitive topics that are scrubbed from most Chinese media sites.

The Suizhou intermediate people’s court in central Hubei province sentenced him on Tuesday after he was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power”, according to Human Rights Watch.  “The sentence … once again shows how the Chinese government abuses the judicial system to silence dissidents,” said Patrick Poon, a China researcher at Amnesty International. There were “serious flaws in the procedure of this case, without due process in line with international standards”, he added. Liu’s sentence came one day after human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was handed a four and a half year sentence on similar subversion charges. Wang is one of more than 200 lawyers and activists who were swept up in a 2015 crackdown aimed at courtroom critics of Communist authorities. 

Huang Qi, China’s first “cyber-dissident” and founder of human rights website “64 Tianwang”, is also facing charges. Arrested in 2016 for “leaking state secrets”, Huang has since been held in a detention centre in south-western Sichuan province and was expected to go on trial earlier this month. Liu was detained at about the same time, according to Poon. “Prosecuting the editor of a human rights website shows just how frightened the Chinese government is about independent reporting on abuses from inside China,” said Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement on Liu’s sentence. The court could not be reached for comment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/29/chinese-activist-liu-feiyue-given-five-years-jail-for-inciting-subversion

see also
Yong Xiong and Ben Westcott - Marxist student snatched on way to Mao Zedong celebration

'Death knell' of press freedom in Hong Kong has been a long time coming // Young Marxists are going missing in China after protesting for workers
Book review: The State as Faction: Mao’s Cultural Revolution
China’s gift to Europe is a new version of crony capitalism. By Martin Hala
'My hair turned white': report lifts lid on China's forced confessions
THE DISAPPEARED China’s global kidnapping campaign. By Zach Dorfman
China’s dystopian push to revolutionize surveillance. By Maya Wang
The Return of the Show Trial: China’s Televised “Confessions”. By Magnus Fiskesjö
The Crises of Party Culture: by Yang Guang
China’s Brave Underground Journal - Remembrance


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