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Chinese rights advocate charged with tax evasion

A pioneering Chinese legal rights advocate has been formally arrested on tax evasion charges, an activist said, while Tibetan Buddhist monks have been sentenced over an attack on a police station, a human rights group said.

Xu Zhiyong (許志勇) was seized from his home at dawn nearly three weeks ago and has been charged with tax evasion, a leading activist and academic said yesterday.

Xu’s arrest is the latest tightening of Beijing’s grip on the country’s determined but small activist community, which has come under intense government pressure in a year with several sensitive anniversaries.

In June, Beijing marked 20 years since the crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square, and in October the country celebrates the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic.

Xu, co-founder of the Open Constitution Initiative, or Gongmeng, had been out of contact since he was taken away by security officials on July 29.

Notice of his arrest was sent to his employer, the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications, earlier this week, said Teng Biao (滕彪), another high profile rights lawyer.

“There isn’t a legal justification for this arrest,” said Teng, who added he was told about the arrest by Xu’s lawyer, Zhou Ze (周澤).

Zhou declined to comment on the case.

The arrest brings the case closer to a possible trial — although it is not a firm decision to prosecute — and means Xu may potentially be allowed some access to his lawyer.

But in a legal system controlled by the ruling Communist Party, he faces a high likelihood of coming before a judge.

Teng said the charges carry a maximum seven-year sentence.

“In the short term, this arrest will influence our work, but from a long-term perspective, it can’t completely stop our work,” Teng said. “Chinese society wants to move toward rule of law.”

Made up of scholars, lawyers and rights advocates, Xu’s Gongmeng (公盟) group has annoyed Beijing with a series of high-profile cases, including providing legal aid to ­victims of tainted baby milk formula and with a report criticizing the handling of demonstrations across the Tibetan plateau last year.

The group’s Beijing office was shut down for non-payment of taxes earlier this month. Its Web site is no longer active.

TIBETAN SENTENCES

Meanwhile, a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks and lay people have been sentenced to up to seven years in prison over a March attack on a police station in western China, a Tibetan human rights monitoring group said.

The eight were sentenced on Thursday by a court in Qinghai Province’s Machen County, according to a report received yesterday from the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a group based in the Indian town of Dharamsala that is home to the self-declared Tibetan government in exile.

It said the group had been found guilty of inciting the attack, but didn’t say when the trial took place.

Scores of area residents reportedly took part in the violence, although the amount of damage and total number of arrests remain unclear. Local officials have refused to release information about the incident and a court clerk reached by telephone yesterday said she had no knowledge about the case. She declined to give her name or other information.

Machen, in Golog prefecture, is a remote, traditionally Tibetan region about 1,200km west of Beijing.

According to March reports, the violence was prompted by the suicide of a Buddhist monk who jumped into the nearby Yellow River to escape police interrogation. The monk, identified in the reports as Tashi Sangpo, had allegedly unfurled a Tibetan flag on the roof of his monastery on March 10, the anniversary of the start of the failed 1959 Tibetan revolt against Chinese rule, and distributed pamphlets urging protests against Chinese rule.

The violence was an echo of rioting and mass protests that broke out across Tibetan-populated regions of China in March last year.

According to the Tibetan center, those sentenced last week included six Tibetan Buddhist monks and two lay people. The harshest sentence of seven years was given to Palden Gyatso, a senior monk at the local Ragya Monastery, while other monks were given sentences from one to four years, the center said.

The two lay people were given sentences of six months and one year, it said.
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