A group of Chinese intellectuals yesterday sued over what they say is a leadership coup at a leading liberal magazine, as a former editor lost an appeal against a ruling ordering him to apologize for doubting details in a tale of wartime heroism.
Since taking office more than three years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has cracked down on dissent, reining in the media and detaining dozens of rights activists. The government denies any abuse of human rights or freedom of expression, saying it is going after lawbreakers.
Founded in 1991, the magazine, Yanhuang Chunqiu, also called China Through the Ages, is known for challenging party views on sensitive issues, such as political reform.
However, last month it halted publication after a government body forced a sudden reshuffle of its leadership team, which one of the magazine’s lawyers has blamed on an effort to stifle voices that disagree with the Chinese Communist Party.
It has been seen as a forum for more reform-minded officials.
Wang Yanjun (王彥君), one of the magazine’s former editors, said seven of them were suing the two new editors, Hao Qingjun (郝慶軍) and Jia Leilei (賈磊磊), demanding they return the magazine to its former staff and saying its current operations were illegal.
“They hijacked our official Web site, cracked the password and are publishing their own illegal views there,” Wang said.
Hao declined to comment, while reporters were not immediately able to locate a contact for Jia. The court did not answer calls seeking comment, nor did the Chinese National Academy of Arts.
Separately, Hong Zhenkuai (洪振快), a former editor at the magazine, lost an appeal against a June court case in which he was told to publicly apologize for two articles written in 2013 questioning the details of a well-known story about Communist soldiers fighting the Japanese in World War II, the “Five Warriors of Mount Langyashan.”
Hong said that he would not apologize and that he had defamed nobody.
“My articles exposed the truth about a period of history,” he said. “I did nothing illegal.”
Hong had been sued by relatives of the surviving soldiers.
In the story, the five soldiers jumped off a cliff so the Japanese could not take them alive, though two of them lived.
Hong had expressed doubt about how many Japanese the Chinese soldiers killed, how the two survived and where the cliff is.
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