China released two men after they completed eight-year prison terms for being part of a study group that focused on political reform and posted essays online, a human rights group said.
Internet engineer Yang Zili (楊子立) and freelance writer Zhang Honghai (張宏海) were freed on Thursday, New York-based Human Rights in China said in an statement.
Along with journalist Xu Wei (徐偉) and geologist Jin Haike (靳海科), they were known as the “four gentlemen of Beijing” when they were arrested in March 2001 for belonging to the New Youth Study Group, the statement said on Friday.
The group’s meetings reportedly drew many university students and members who communicated by e-mail and posted essays on a Web site, it said.
The essays bore titles such as China’s democracy is fake, and Be a new citizen, remake China, said a copy of the indictment released at the time by the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
All four were convicted of subversion and intention to overthrow the Communist Party in May 2003, the group said. Wu and Jin were sentenced to 10 years.
China says its law guarantees citizens freedom of speech and expression, but critics are often arrested under an anti-subversion clause, a vague term that can yield hefty prison terms.
Yang and Zhang are subject to two years’ deprivation of political rights, including freedom of speech and assembly, Human Rights in China said. They could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Human Rights in China said they were all in their 20s when they were detained and the trial rested on three witnesses who also were members of the study group, one who was an informant for the Ministry of Public Security. After the conviction, all three witnesses said their testimony was given under coercion, the group said.
The four also said at the trial they were abused while in police detention, including beatings and electric shocks to their genitals.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS