Tag Archives: Xu Zhiyong

(26 January 2014)

Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) protests in the strongest terms against sentencing Mr. Xu Zhiyong, its honorable member and Lin Zhao Memorial Award Laureate for 2013, and the initiator of New Citizens’ Movement, to four years imprisonment for “gathering crowds to disrupt public order” announced today by the First People’s Intermediate Court of Beijing. ICPC believes that this verdict, based solely on accounting six small-scale New Citizens’ Movement’s street demonstration and protest activities as being organized, planned and incited by Xu Zhiyong, has completely violated the basic human rights to the freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration, guaranteed to citizens by Article 35 of China’s Constitution and by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which China signed in 1998, and is simply another serious political and judicial persecution in reality. ICPC therefore calls on organizations in China and abroad to urge the Chinese authorities to rectify as soon as possible this miscarriage of justice, and release immediately and unconditionally Mr. Xu Zhiyong and all of those imprisoned for peaceful exercises of their civil rights. Continue reading →