by Jonathan Watts - Guardian
Anger at harsh treatment of prominent activist found guilty of subversion.
One of China’s most prominent human rights activists was condemned today to 11 years in prison, prompting a furious backlash from domestic bloggers and international civil society groups.
Liu Xiaobo, the founder of the Charter 08 campaign for constitutional reform, was given the unusually harsh jail term on Christmas Day in an apparent attempt to minimise international attention.
The case has raised fears that other drafters of Charter 08 could also face retribution from the authorities.
Following a year in detention and a two-hour trial, it took the No 1 intermediate people’s court in Beijing just 10 minutes to read out the 11-page sentence.
Liu was found guilty on Wednesday of subversion, the vaguely defined charge that Communist party leaders often use to imprison political opponents.
In a statement released by the state-controlled Xinhua news agency, the court said it had “strictly followed the legal procedures” and “fully protected Liu’s litigation rights”.
However, the author and academic had been detained without trial for a year. His wife, Liu Xia, was not allowed into an earlier hearing, nor were foreign diplomatic observers. Liu’s lawyers have been warned not to discuss the case.
But the defence team said they were prepared to appeal against the verdict.
“We cannot accept this sentence because we have argued in court that Liu is innocent,” said one of his lawyers, Mo Shaoping. His wife could not be reached as her mobile phone was suddenly out of order.
Amnesty International expressed outrage at the sentence, which it said was the harshest in 35 subversion cases since 2003.
“Liu Xiaobo’s detention and trial shows the Chinese government will not tolerate Chinese citizens participating in discussions about their own form of government,” said Sam Zarifi, director of the group’s Asia pacific program.
“After this, more than 300 scholars, lawyers and officials who proposed the blueprint for improving the political system might be at risk as well, as nearly 10,000 signatories.”
Outside the courtroom and in the Chinese blogosphere, Liu’s supporters have initiated a yellow ribbon campaign for his release. “China’s Mandela was born this Christmas,” wrote the influential blogger Beichen.
Many activists were kept under house arrest or warned not to attend the hearings, but the contemporary artist Ai Weiwei was among those at the courtroom. “This does not mean a meteor has fallen. This is the discovery of a star,” he tweeted. “Although this is a sentence on Liu Xiaobo alone, it is also a slap on the face for everyone in China.”
Liu, a former Beijing Normal University professor, is a leading intellectual critic of the repressive Chinese government.
Liu was previously imprisoned for 20 months for taking part in the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.
He told friends that he knew the risk of imprisonment when he drafted Charter 08, which demands the open election of public officials, freedom of religion and expression, and the abolition of subversion laws.
“We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes,” the petition says.
Liu was arrested last December before the Charter was made public. Other drafters and signatories have been harassed. The mainstream media have been forbidden to cover the subject and censors have blocked many related internet sites and articles. Many Chinese are unaware that it exists.
Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco and Margaret Atwood are among 300 international writers who have called for the release of Liu, who is a former president of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre.
“Liu Xiaobo’s case is about agreed international human rights standards, not merely the internal affairs of China,” said John Ralston Saul, the president of International PEN. “China is signatory to international treaties and conventions, and cannot be given a free pass when it acts against its own and international standards.”
The United States and European Union have also urged Beijing to free Liu.
“We continue to call on the government of China to release him immediately,” Gregory May, first secretary with the US Embassy, said outside the courthouse today. May was one of a dozen diplomats stopped by authorities from attending the trial and sentencing.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters this week that statements from embassies calling for Liu’s release were “a gross interference of China’s internal affairs”.
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I have spent three month working in a village in China in the nineties. I discovered that the Chinese had a different view of morality than the West. While I am a staunch supporter of Human Rights and Justice,my experience in China makes we wonder if the Chinese masses have the same or silmilar view to democracy and Hunan Rights as we in the West.
To counter this, once China signed in the UN to a charter of Human Rights,then this settles the dispute within me.
Dear Armando, your final sentence says it all.
Human Rights and Justice are Universal and there is only one meaning for them! Only one interpetation.
Following further from my first comment, I would like to express my thoughts about the problem of implementation of Human and Civil rights not only in China but in all countries.The reason I felt uneasy during my stay in 1994 in China is that it appeared to me that what was right and moral was decided by group approval.There were a couple of occasions when I was misinformed about situations by the people I was working with in the village and it was done so without shame or embarrasment even after the misinformation was uncovered by me.As a result I thought that if they wanted to avoid paying me my consultancy fee, that I could be accused of an offence and they could decide to give false evidence against me.I have had experience in many countries but had never experienced this fear before.In fact I was threatend with being charged with industrial sabotage even after I fully completed my mission and saved the venture appox.$20,000(in 1994)without charge, completing work left unfinished by other technitions.
One could say, well that is China but it is different in our counties in the West.But is this so? Just look at the treatment handed out to so called whistle blowers. They loose the respect of their collegues and often their jobs just because they want to do what is right and moral.How different is this from my experience in China? I think that this shows that in varying degrees loyalty to the group, is a weakness in most if not all societies.
For Human Rights and Civil Liberties to be implemented and upheld it requires dedicated,fearless and honourable people to overseer it working.