China: three rights lawyer formally arrested
Event- Country
- China
- Initial Date
- Jun 21, 2014
- Event Description
A Chinese rights lawyer has been arrested on charges of state subversion, his wife said on social media on Saturday, furthering a crackdown on activists since last year. "Tang Jingling has been arrested on charges of 'inciting subversion of state power'," his wife Wang Yanfang wrote on her Sina Weibo microblog account, where she also posted a photo of the notice. Tang, who is being held in the southern city of Guangzhou and who has represented uncompensated victims of land grabs and imprisoned rights defenders, was detained in May on a charge of "causing a disturbance." Numerous activists were taken in around that time, some temporarily, ahead of the sensitive anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Tang's arrest also comes amid a series of arrests and trials of rights activists and lawyers since new Communist Party leaders under President Xi Jinping took over in late 2012. Many have faced charges such as disturbing public order or "picking fights and provoking trouble" rather than the more serious charge of state subversion. "To go from an ordinary crime to now a political crime means it could be more serious," Liu Xiaoyuan, another rights lawyer and acquaintance of Tang, told AFP. This year several activists from the moderate New Citizens Movement, a loose network in various cities who held small protests against government corruption and other causes, have received jail sentences of up to six and a half years, with most people convicted of disrupting public order. The prominent Beijing-based rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who was also detained ahead of the Tiananmen anniversary, was arrested this month for "creating disturbances and illegally obtaining personal information." Chinese activist and 2010 Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo was in 2009 sentenced to 11 years' jail for state subversion. He had spearheaded the Charter 08, a document signed by hundreds of dissidents, intellectuals and others urging democratic reforms in China. UPDATE: 23 April 2015 Subversion, Public Order Cases of Tiananmen Anniversary Activists Move Closer to Trial Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong look set to move ahead with the subversion trial of the "Guangzhou Three" rights lawyers next month, their lawyer said on Thursday.Tang Jingling, Wang Qingying, and Yuan Xinting were criminally detained on May 16, 2014 initially for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," but the charges were later changed to the more serious "incitement to subvert state power." "I think the indictment will come very soon now, within the next three weeks," Yuan's lawyer Ge Wenxiu told RFA after meeting with his client in Guangzhou's No. 1 Detention Center on Tuesday."They will[all three] be indicted at the same time ... as they will all be part of the same case," Ge said. "We are still waiting for confirmation, and we won't know the details until the indictment is released."The three were detained amid a nationwide crackdown on activists and family members of victims of the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square student-led pro-democracy movement in the run-up to the 25th anniversary on June 4.Ge said Yuan had seemed in relatively good spirits during the visit. "He said he wasn't doing too badly in there, and I gave him letters from his son and daughter," he said. "He said the conditions in there aren't too bad, and that they allow him to read books.""His health is not too bad either."Appeal for world's attention. He said Yuan had called on the international community to pay more attention to the struggle going on inside China for freedom and democracy. "Chinese people make up a fifth of the world's population, and their liberation movement is closely bound up with the freedom of humanity as a whole," Ge quoted Yuan as saying.Tang's wife Wang Yanfang told RFA that the news came after the state prosecution service had twice referred the case back to police for further investigation, although no new evidence had been produced against her husband."Everybody knows that this is a political case, and that what they did in no way amounts to a crime under Chinese law," Wang said.The police charge sheet for Tang mentioned his involvement in "civil disobedience movements," a commemoration of the death of Mao-era dissident Lin Zhao, and a June 4 meditation event.Also mentioned was his part in a campaign to end China's "hukou" household registration system linking access to education and other public services to a person's town of birth. 'Picking quarrels' Meanwhile, authorities in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou have already issued an indictment of detained activist Yu Shiwen for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," his lawyer said.Yu was detained as part of the same crackdown on activists marking the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square bloodshed, and is the last of the "Zhengzhou 10" activists to remain behind bars.Yu had given interviews to overseas media, and had issued signed invitations to public memorial events and posted them online, according to the indictment.As a result, the memorial event was covered by 28 media organizations, it said, and photos of the event were viewed online by large numbers of people, it said.But his lawyer Zhang Xuezhong said his actions didn't amount to a crime under Chinese law."Giving interviews to overseas media and post things online, no matter how many people click on them, doesn't amount to a crime," Zhang said in an interview on Thursday."These criminal charges are in fact a form of political persecution, because it's really about the fact that the authorities don't want people to bring up[Tiananmen] in public," he said. "It's not disrupting public order, whether hundreds or even thousands of people click on these documents online."Zhang said it is a natural and normal part of Chinese traditional culture to remember and to venerate the dead.The ruling Chinese Communist Party bans public memorials marking the event, although police have escorted the relatives of those who died from house arrest to cemeteries to pay their respects to loved ones in private. Calls for reappraisal The party has continued to ignore growing calls in China and from overseas for a reappraisal of the 1989 student protests, which it once styled a "counterrevolutionary rebellion."The number of people killed when People's Liberation Army tanks and troops entered Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989, remains a mystery.Beijing authorities once put the death toll at "nearly 300," but the central government, which labeled the six weeks of pro-democracy protests a "counterrevolutionary uprising," has not issued an official toll or list of names.China has launched a clampdown in recent years on its embattled legal profession, with many civil rights law firms struggling to renew their licenses.New rules introduced in the past two years ban lawyers from defending certain clients, and leave them vulnerable to being charged themselves with subversion if they defend sensitive cases. Out of more than 204,000 lawyers in China, only a few hundred risk taking on cases that deal with human rights, according to Amnesty International. UPDATE: 19/ 06/ 2015 Chinese Court Pulls Plug on Activists' Subversion Trial Amid Procedural Dispute With Defense Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong called off the trial of three prominent rights activists after they dismissed their defense team amid a procedural dispute with court officials, lawyers said on Friday. Rights lawyer Tang Jingling, former teacher Wang Qingying, and writer-activist Yuan Xinting, known as the Guangzhou Three, were scheduled to stand trial on Friday at the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court for "incitement to subvert state power" after being held in a police detention center for more than a year. Defense lawyers said they had insisted the defense be allowed to call witnesses, but their request was refused by the bench. "The court has repeatedly broken the law and infringed on the rights of the defendants," defense attorney Ge Wenxiu told RFA after the trial was adjourned mid-session on Friday. "The court refused to accept the correct opinions of the defense lawyers, who had no way to protect their clients' interests after that." "So all three defendants terminated their instruction to their lawyers," said Ge, adding that the court was then forced to pull the plug on the proceedings. Tang, Wang, and Yuan were criminally detained on May 16, 2014, initially for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," but the charges were later changed to the more serious "incitement to subvert state power." Tang has maintained his innocence of the charges against him, which came amid a nationwide roundup of dissidents ahead of last year's politically sensitive 25th anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement. His wife, Wang Yanfang, told RFA that security was very tight around the court buildings when she arrived to attend the trial. "We were getting ready to go in, and there were plainclothes police taking video of us, and they cursed me out when I asked them about it," Wang said. "Then they shoved me into their police car, forcibly, and then they pushed Wang Jingying's wife into the car as well." She said some 20 other supporters from outside the court building were also detained. "I didn't know any of them," Wang added. An unreasonably long time The overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said all three defendants had been held for an unreasonably long time before the case came to court. "The three spent over one year in pretrial detention before a judge heard the case," the group said on Friday in a statement on its website. It said Tang and Wang had both made allegations of torture in detention, which were never investigated. The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called ahead of the trial for the Guangzhou Three to be released. "Reading and debating books is no crime, nor is it a basis for mistreatment, torture, or denying basic rights to a fair trial," HRW China director Sophie Richardson said in a statement on the group's website. "If anyone has made a �serious political mistake,_ it___s the authorities who seek to crush peaceful debate about China___s future," Richardson said. The Chinese government should immediately release the three lawyers and drop all charges against them, HRW said. "Incitement to subvert state power" can carry sentences of up to 15 years in prison, where the defendant is judged to be a "ringleader." According to rights lawyers, and HRW, the use of subversion charges to jail peaceful activists and dissidents contravenes Article 35 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which guarantees freedom of expression to all citizens. Both Yuan and Wang have complained to RFA via their lawyers of repeated beatings and mistreatment inside the police-run Guangzhou No.1 Detention Center. According to the indictment against them, the three men allegedly incited others in public to participate in a nonviolent civil disobedience movement. The three had also distributed and discussed with others writings on the peaceful overthrow of dictatorships, including From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp, it said. Sharp's book contains "serious political mistakes," according to the indictment. Last November, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said the three lawyers' ongoing detentions were arbitrary and that they should be released immediately, HRW said.
- Impact of Event
- 3
- Violation
- (Arbitrary) Arrest and Detention
- Reprisal as Result of Communication
- Rights Concerned
- Freedom of association
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 23.12916300000001
Longitude: 113.26443500000002
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 20 June 2014 Tang Jingling, a prominent lawyer who has frequently represented rights activists and victims of land confiscation, and two other rights lawyers -Wang Qingying and Yuan Xinting- were formally arrested on charges of state subversion. The three had originally been detained in May 2014 among a spate of arrests targeting a variety of dissenters. __�State subversion' is a catch-all charge used to justify illegitimate detentions of activists, but it is more serious than the more frequently used __�disturbing public order' or __�picking fights and provoking trouble.' Observers predict that the fact that national security can be invoked by the state, due to the nature of the charges, will make it extremely difficult for the three to have access to a lawyer. UPDATE 16/07/2014: Yuan Xinting, who suffers from bowel problems and high blood pressure, has been denied medical parole. Mr. Yuan's health has been deteriorating since 23 June. UPDATE 25/08/2014: All three lawyers' detentions have been extended until 20 September. This is unusual because cases usually are taken up by state prosecution within two months of formal arrest in China.