Police have finally presented a case against prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), who has been jailed for a year without charge after helping produce a high-profile manifesto calling for sweeping democratic reforms in China, a lawyer said yesterday.
The development moves Liu one step closer to standing trial and ends months of anxious uncertainty for his family and supporters.
Police extended their investigation of Liu three times over the past year — China's legal limit.
Lawyer Shang Baojun (尚寶軍) said the report presented by investigators alleges Liu incited to subvert state power with several essays he posted online and by helping produce Charter 08, an appeal for more civil rights in China and an end to the Chinese Communist Party's political dominance.
“This marks the end of the investigation phase and the beginning of the prosecution phase,” Shang said.
Prosecutors have about a month to examine the report and accompanying evidence and decide whether it is sufficient for a trial.
There have been numerous international appeals for Liu's release, including one last December signed by famous writers Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer and Umberto Eco. The latest development is likely to trigger a new round of lobbying on his behalf.
The investigator's report was handed over to prosecutors on Dec. 1, Shang said, but he was not given a copy until yesterday morning.
Beijing routinely uses the charge of subversion to imprison dissidents. Shang said Liu could face up to 15 years in jail.
Liu, a former university professor who spent 20 months in jail after joining pro-democracy protests in 1989, was taken away by police on Dec. 8 last year, a day before the charter was made public, and held at a secret location for six months.
He was formally arrested in June.
In other news, China said yesterday police had detained 94 people who fled the western region of Xinjiang after deadly rioting there in July — the country's worst communal violence in decades.
China continues to pursue and punish people involved in the violence, which it says left more than 200 dead, most of them from the majority Han ethnic group.
As of Friday, China has handed down 17 death sentences over the rioting.
A month-long “strike hard” campaign last month caught the latest 94 people, police in Xinjiang said.
A woman who answered the phone in Xinjiang's police office said no further details were available, including how many of the 94 were Muslim Uighurs and how many were Han. The woman gave her surname as Li.
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