A Chinese lawyer who specializes in helping Shanghai residents fight eviction from properties being developed as the city expands and modernizes has pleaded not guilty to revealing state secrets.
Zheng Enchong (鄭恩寵) appeared on Thursday before a closed-door trial charged with "illegally providing state secrets to entities outside of China," his wife, Jiang Meili, said.
The 53-year-old lawyer had helped families in more than 500 cases involving Shanghai urban development projects and also launched a suit against a firm run by Zhou Zhengyi (周正毅), a flamboyant snack-shop owner turned property tycoon who is now being investigated for corruption.
A Shanghai city official confirmed yesterday the hearing had taken place, but declined make any further comment when prompted. The hearing will resume in eight days.
It was not immediately clear what the state secrets were, but state secrets can cover a wide range of official information, and those found guilty of leaking classified material can face the death penalty.
"He entered a plea of not guilty and is confident of winning," Zheng's wife said.
Zheng's trial is the latest development in a scandal that surfaced after incensed residents accused Zhou of colluding with city officials and of getting a 43,000m2 plot of prime real estate.
Chinese newspapers have reported that Zhou is now under house arrest, but authorities have not confirmed his whereabouts or any detention.
Zhou has been dubbed Shanghai's wealthiest man and is believed to be China's 11th richest individual.
Zheng's trial has served as a rallying point for scores of disgruntled residents who have lost their homes as Shanghai develops.
On Thursday, hundreds of residents who tried to enter the city's Second Intermediate People's Court to attend Zheng's trial were stopped by police, witnesses said.
"The police took all of us into a nearby high school and jotted down our particulars before telling us to leave," one woman said by telephone.
US-based Human Rights in China condemned the trial.
"If justice is not seen to be done ... how will anyone else be willing to take a stand against corruption?" the group's president, Liu Qing, said in a statement.
Zheng's trial comes a week after the loss of a lawsuit launched against city authorities by a group of Shanghai residents who had been evicted from their homes.
The Shanghai Housing and Land Administration Bureau, responding to a growing number of complaints about its policies, says it will introduce new regulations to strive for greater transparency.
Zheng was originally detained on June 6 this year on accusations of stealing state secrets after assisting displaced families in more than 500 cases relating to Shanghai's urban redevelopment projects. His license was revoked in 2001.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
RSS