A high-profile Chinese government critic said he and 11 others were detained by police in a hotel yesterday to prevent them from attending the trial of an activist who investigated the deaths of schoolchildren in last year’s earthquake.
Avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) said police in the southwestern city of Chengdu also roughed up him and one of the other supporters who had traveled to the city to try to attend the trial of Tan Zuoren (譚作人), an activist charged with subversion.
The charges Tan faces appear to be linked to his quake investigation as well as essays he wrote about the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Tiananmen Square that ended in a deadly military crackdown. Beijing routinely uses the charge of subversion to imprison dissidents for years.
Tan, 55, denied all charges during yesterday’s trial at the Chengdu Intermediate Court, which concluded at midday after about three hours with no immediate ruling, his lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (蒲志強) said.
Following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan last year, Tan tried to investigate the collapse of school buildings in the quake and the number of schoolchildren killed, estimating at least 5,600 students were victims.
Critics allege that shoddy construction, enabled by corruption, caused several schools to collapse while buildings nearby remained intact — a politically sensitive theory that the government has tried to quash.
Tan’s wife and one of his daughters were allowed into the courtroom, although his brother and other daughter were not, Pu said.
Footage from Hong Kong Cable TV showed several police officers and vehicles stationed near the court in Chengdu.
The broadcaster said dozens of relatives of the quake victims gathered outside the court and wanted to go in to support Tan but were stopped by police.
Pu said that inside the courtroom, his requests to call on three witnesses, including the artist Ai, as well as to show video evidence were rejected.
Ai said he decided to try to go to the court to support Tan, but four police officers carrying guns and batons barged into his hotel room at 3am yesterday to take him away.
One of them struck him on his right cheek when he questioned them, he said, while another supporter was also roughed up.
“They said, ‘If we need, we can beat you to death,’” Ai said in a telephone interview from the hotel that police took him and the other supporters to, not far from the court.
About 20 officers guarded them, but did not give a reason for their detention, Ai said.
“It’s quite obvious that they just don’t want us to go to Tan Zuoren’s trial,” he said. “They’re showing less and less respect for the rights of citizens and for the rule of law.”
Calls to the Chengdu public security bureau rang unanswered.
Amnesty International urged the Chinese authorities to drop the cases against Tan and another earthquake activist Huang Qi (黃琦), who last week was tried for state secrets.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS