{"id":8406,"date":"2019-01-29T22:32:43","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T03:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=8406"},"modified":"2019-01-29T22:32:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T03:32:43","slug":"chinese-activist-liu-feiyue-given-five-years-jail-for-inciting-subversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/chinese-activist-liu-feiyue-given-five-years-jail-for-inciting-subversion","title":{"rendered":"Chinese activist Liu Feiyue given five years’ jail for ‘inciting subversion’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Xi Jinping takes a public oath of allegiance to the Constitution in the Great Hall of the People 13th National People\u2019s Congress, Beijing, China Liu Feiyue is one of many Chinese human rights activists who have been swept up in Xi Jinping\u2019s crackdown on dissent. Photograph: Xinhua\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

Flawed trial shows how Beijing abuses the judicial system to silence dissent, says Amnesty International<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u2013 sensitive topics that are scrubbed from most Chinese media sites.<\/p>\n

The Suizhou intermediate people\u2019s court in central Hubei province sentenced him on Tuesday after he was found guilty of \u201cinciting subversion of state power\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wang Quanzhang: China sentences human rights lawyer to four years in prison<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

According to Liu\u2019s family members, one of whom was allowed to attend the hearing, the activist shouted at the end of his hearing: \u201cThis is political persecution!\u201d He was then dragged out of the court room.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think the verdict is unfair. It\u2019s political persecution. He is charged of inciting subversion of state power, but he is not. He just helps petitioners,\u201d said Ding Qihua, Liu\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n

Liu\u2019s website published information on human rights abuses, specifically the abuse of activists in psychiatric facilities where authorities often send dissidents, as well as the cases of workers, farmers, teachers, and residents evicted from their homes.<\/p>\n

Liu\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sentence \u2026 once again shows how the Chinese government abuses the judicial system to silence dissidents,\u201d said Patrick Poon, a China researcher at Amnesty International. There were \u201cserious flaws in the procedure of this case, without due process in line with international standards\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

According to Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), Liu was detained in November 2016 and was not granted a meeting with his lawyer for half a year. Police also harassed his lawyers, disbarring one that his family had hired. Authorities have also pressured his family to convince Liu to confess.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prosecution\u2019s case against Liu Feiyue should have been thrown out because authorities deprived him of his due process rights, including the right to a fair and public trial by an independent court and access to a lawyer,\u201d CHRD said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Huang Qi, China\u2019s first \u201ccyber-dissident\u201d and founder of human rights website \u201c64 Tianwang\u201d, is also facing charges.<\/p>\n

Arrested in 2016 for \u201cleaking state secrets\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cProsecuting the editor of a human rights website shows just how frightened the Chinese government is about independent reporting on abuses from inside China,\u201d said Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement on Liu\u2019s sentence.<\/p>\n

Source:https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/jan\/29\/chinese-activist-liu-feiyue-given-five-years-jail-for-inciting-subversion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flawed trial shows how Beijing abuses th … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1829,35,110,167],"tags":[1708,1100,1934,1485],"views":6123,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8408,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8406\/revisions\/8408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}