MCLC: Xu Zhiyong sentenced to 4 years

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Xu Zhiyong sentenced to 4 years
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (1/25/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/world/asia/china-sentences-legal-activist
-to-4-years-for-role-in-protests.html

China Sentences Legal Activist to 4 Years for Role in Protests
By Andrew Jacobs and Chris Buckley

BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced a prominent legal activist to four
years in prison Sunday in a case widely seen as a demonstration of the
Communist Party leadership’s determination to quell any challenges to its
hold on power.

The activist, Xu Zhiyong, was convicted of “gathering a crowd to disturb
public order,” a charge that stemmed from his role organizing a
grass-roots New Citizens Movement, which sought to give voice to public
discontent over official corruption and social injustice.

After a judge of the No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing
announced the guilty verdict and sentence, Mr. Xu denounced the trial as
he was led away by guards, said one of Mr. Xu’s lawyers, Zhang Qingfang.

“He said, ‘The court today has completely destroyed what remained of
respect for rule of law in China,’ and then he was taken away,” said Mr.
Zhang. His account of the verdict and Mr. Xu’s comment was confirmed by
the other defense lawyer, Yang Jinzhu.

“He can still appeal, but this outcome was decided by the senior leaders,
and there’s no hope of changing the verdict,” Mr. Zhang said. He said the
court could have imposed a maximum sentence of five years.

The judgment, coming unusually swiftly after a trial Wednesday, will
silence Mr. Xu for now. But the sentence could also enhance Mr. Xu’s
prominence as an advocate for political liberalization. Mr. Xu and his two
lawyers remained silent in protest for most of the proceedings, but Mr. Xu
used his concluding statement to deliver part of an impassioned manifesto
for democratic change, free speech and rule of law. The full text has
circulated on the Internet.

For the verdict hearing, the police stood guard for blocks around the
courthouse, keeping away journalists, diplomats and ordinary citizens
concerned about the case. Journalists who tried to approach the court were
told to leave.

As the first prosecution of a high-profile activist under Xi Jinping, the
Communist Party secretary who took power in November 2012, the case was
seen as a barometer of how China’s new leadership — the first in a decade
— would respond to organized calls for reform. Some liberal intellectuals
and rights advocates initially hoped that Mr. Xi would be more tolerant
than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, of mild campaigns for change.

In 2012, Mr. Xu helped promote the New Citizens Movement, an organization
that drew up to 5,000 members dedicated to fighting government graft and
education policies restricting the children of rural migrants from
attending big city schools.

While many of the group’s activities involved informal discussions at
restaurants across the country, some of its members took part in small
street rallies in 2012 and early 2013 that unnerved the Communist Party
leadership.

Prosecutors claimed Mr. Xu was the “ringleader” of several protests in
Beijing during which participants held aloft banners denouncing corruption
or demanding an end to the nation’s discriminatory education policies.

Other participants in the New Citizens Movement and similar protests also
face prosecution, including two who stood trial in the two days after Mr.
Xu’s trial. Four others face trial Monday in Beijing, according to Human
Rights in China.

Legal experts and human rights advocates described the prosecution of Mr.
Xu as deeply flawed. His lawyers were not allowed to cross-examine
prosecution witnesses, whose testimony was submitted in writing only so
they did not appear in court. Nor were the defense lawyers permitted to
call in witnesses of their own.

Mr. Xu’s lawyers unsuccessfully challenged the legality of holding
separate trials for the New Citizens Movement defendants in Beijing, a
move they said prevented them from benefiting from testimony that could
help in their defense. Mr. Zhang, one of his lawyers, called the trial
last Wednesday “a piece of theater.”

Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong,
said Mr. Xu’s slapdash prosecution and the sentence were designed to deter
others seeking to agitate against the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

“It sends out the message that the law is essentially a tool for the party
to rule the citizenry, not for the citizenry to curtail the power of the
state,” he said.