China yesterday put on trial three activists from a group that has used protest banners and dinner parties to urge citizens to embrace their constitutional rights, underscoring the Chinese Communist Party’s intolerance of any semblance of organized political challenge.
The trial of grassroots rights advocates Liu Ping (劉萍), Wei Zhongping (魏忠平) and Li Sihua (李思華) at a district court in Xinyu city in Jiangxi Province was held under tight security.
It adjourned with an unexpected development: After defense lawyers lost a gambit to declare the judges unfit, the judges prevented the lawyers from speaking further and the activists declared they wanted to hire new attorneys. The court did not say when the proceedings would resume.
Police used crowd-control barriers to keep the public — and diplomats from the US, the EU and Canada — about a few hundred meters away from the courthouse.
“The United States urges the Chinese government to respect the internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedoms of expression and assembly,” said Daniel Delk, the US embassy’s political officer.
The three activists are part of the New Citizens Movement, a loose network of campaigners who have lobbied for officials to declare their assets to help curb widespread corruption. Participants have held small, peaceful demonstrations, usually involving a handful of people holding banners, making speeches or collecting signatures.
About two dozen members of the group have either been arrested or briefly detained since March, according to other members who have been keeping track. The three campaigners in Xinyu are the first among them to be tried and other activists say authorities will use it to gauge their support.
“They want to know how many people care enough about the case to travel to a small city,” veteran rights activist Hu Jia (胡佳) said. “Will diplomats try to attend trial? Will the foreign media be there?”
The three activists are accused of “illegal assembly” — a charge their lawyer says stems from a photograph of them holding signs calling for the release of other protesters.
Liu and Wei face an additional public order charge and of “using an evil cult to undermine law enforcement” related to an online post Liu wrote last year about a trial of Falun Gong petitioners.
Defense lawyers called the charges absurd and argued that the judges, who allowed authorities to detain the trio longer than they were legally allowed to, were unfit to rule in the case, said Zhang Xuezhong (張雪忠), one of the attorneys.
However, the judges rejected that and appeared to retaliate against the lawyers by preventing them from speaking any further, Zhang said. This made the defendants fear that they would get virtually no hearing for their defense arguments with the current lawyers, so they declared they wanted new ones, he said.
“It’s the most rational thing to do to best protect their legal rights,” he said after the trial was adjourned to an as-yet unannounced date.
Meanwhile, authorities in Shanghai have denied that a petitioner was beaten to death by local police over a property dispute.
The response came after dozens protested in the heart of the city at the weekend to demand compensation for being evicted from their homes and over the death of Shen Yong, who was locked in a dispute with the government over the demolition of his house.
Radio Free Asia and Internet postings, which could not be confirmed, said last week Shen, 55, was taken to a police station on Thursday, but died shortly after returning home two hours later.
Shen’s home in Pudong was demolished in 2008, but authorities accused him of squatting in replacement housing built on the same site, the Radio Free Asia report said.
The Pudong district government said Shen died of a sudden illness and no external injuries had been found.
“The examination found no trace of injuries caused by external force, the mark on his chest was an indentation caused during life-saving attempts,” it said on its verified account on Sina Weibo.
Additional reporting by AFP
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
RSS