{"id":167,"date":"2018-01-05T20:55:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T20:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/18.212.194.158\/?p=167"},"modified":"2018-01-05T20:55:29","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T20:55:29","slug":"chrd%e5%91%bc%e5%90%81%e4%b8%ad%e5%9b%bd%e6%94%bf%e5%ba%9c%e9%87%8a%e6%94%be%e5%90%b4%e6%b7%a6%e5%b9%b6%e5%81%9c%e6%ad%a2%e4%bb%a5%e5%8f%8d%e5%8a%a8%e4%b8%ba%e5%90%8d%e5%a6%a8%e7%a2%8d%e8%a8%80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"CHRD\u547c\u5401\u4e2d\u56fd\u653f\u5e9c\u91ca\u653e\u5434\u6de6\u5e76\u505c\u6b62\u4ee5\u53cd\u52a8\u4e3a\u540d\u59a8\u788d\u8a00\u8bba\u81ea\u7531 China Must Release Wu Gan & Stop Treating Free Speech as an Act of Subversion"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, January 4, 2017) \u2013 The lengthy prison sentence<\/a> recently given to activist Wu Gan (\u5434\u6de6<\/span>) is a blatant violation of his universal right to free expression and peaceful assembly. CHRD calls on the Chinese government to immediately and unconditionally release Wu. The Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People\u2019s Court handed down an eight-year prison sentence for \u201csubversion of state power\u201d on December 26 following an August trial<\/a>. Wu Gan\u2019s case has been rife with abuses of his due process rights, including his right to legal counsel and the right to a fair and open trial. Wu has also reportedly been subjected to torture in failed efforts by authorities to extract a confession.<\/p>\n

Wu Gan<\/a>, whose advocacy had combined spirited online speech, satire and humor, and street performance, has vowed to appeal his conviction and punishment. An official government summary of the verdict\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0that Wu had \u201cused \u2018rights defense\u2019 and \u2018performance art\u2019 as a \u201cploy\u201d to \u201cseriously harm national security and social stability,\u201d and that he had \u201cused the internet to disseminate voluminous statements attacking state power and the constitutionally established state order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wu\u2019s sentence is the longest to date issued to anyone tied to the 709 Crackdown<\/a> targeting China\u2019s human rights lawyers. Lawyer Zhou Shifeng (\u5468\u4e16\u950b<\/span>)<\/a> is serving a seven-year sentence and activist Hu Shigen (\u80e1\u77f3\u6839<\/span>)<\/a> a 7.5-year punishment, after being convicted in August 2016. Shortly before Wu was detained in May 2015, he had started working with Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, the main target of the crackdown, and where Zhou had served as director.<\/p>\n

Case defined by rampant rights violations<\/em><\/p>\n

Wu Gan has been a victim of injustice and mistreatment at each step in his case, from his initial detention and through his trial and sentencing. Authorities denied Wu access to legal counsel for long stretches of time during his detention. His first visit<\/a> with his lawyers, Yan Xin (\u71d5\u85aa<\/span>) and Ge Yongxi (\u845b\u6c38\u559c<\/span>), occurred on December 9, 2016\u2014nearly 19 months after he was taken into custody. Wu had been held for 27 months by the time he was finally tried on August 14, 2017, an unreasonably prolonged pretrial detention.<\/p>\n

Wu\u2019s August trial and December sentencing were closed to the public, and police blocked and harassed individuals who wanted to gather at courthouses to support the activist. Police reportedly<\/a> questioned and briefly detained several individuals who had gone to Tianjin in anticipation of the hearing in December. Authorities forcibly sent many back to their hometowns, where police kept them under close watch to prevent them from returning to Tianjin. Prior to the trial in August, authorities declared proceedings would be held behind closed doors because the case involved \u201cstate secrets.\u201d Wu Gan\u2019s father, Xu Xiaoshun (\u5f90\u5b5d<\/span>\u987a) was even prevented<\/a> from attending the trial by national security officers. There was a heavy police presence outside the courthouse during the trial, and officers reportedly\u00a0detained<\/a>\u00a0over a dozen individuals.<\/p>\n

Wu made several allegations that he was tortured and mistreated during his detention. At the December 2016 meeting with his lawyers, Wu alleged that police had physically and psychologically tortured him in an effort to make him to confess to crimes, but that he had refused. Lawyers Yan and Ge filed a complaint<\/a>\u00a0to prosecutors in Tianjin over the alleged mistreatment, which included sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme cold, extended interrogations, limits on activities outside his cell and in fresh air, and having his hands cuffed and feet shackled. Wu said that one officer threatened to drive to Wu\u2019s daughter\u2019s school to harass her and make his family resent him, and a police investigator made veiled death threats against Wu\u2019s family. The complaint also alleged that Wu was hospitalized unnecessarily to \u201ccreate psychological pressure.\u201d In 2017, Wu made further accusations, including that Wu\u2019s back injury, which had been caused in detention, and high blood pressure were not being adequately treated. Wu reportedly told lawyer Ge in March 2017 that psychologists had given him \u201ccounseling,\u201d with the apparent aim of persuading him to plead guilty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wu Gan had stressed his innocence in a\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0released via his lawyers before his August 2017 trial. The statement read in part:\u00a0\u201cI will be convicted not because I am guilty, but because of my refusal to accept a government-appointed lawyer, to plead guilty in a televised propaganda confession, and because I exposed torture, mistreatment, violence, and prosecutorial misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wu\u2019s refusal to confess may have factored into his harsh sentence. On the same day that Wu was sentenced, a Hunan court convicted lawyer Xie Yang (\u8c22\u9633<\/span>)<\/a> of \u201cinciting subversion of state power.\u201d The court \u201cexempted\u201d<\/a> Xie from punishment, however, stating that he had admitted at trial to criminal behavior and \u201cexpressed regret.\u201d It is believed that Xie\u2019s statements, including his \u201cconfession,\u201d were issued under coercion and in exchange for \u201cleniency.\u201d Though not sent to prison, Xie continues to face retaliation, including constant monitoring by police officers living next to his home.<\/p>\n

Wu Gan should be released, and should never have been detained in the first place, based on standards in international law and principles in China\u2019s constitution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a> and the country\u2019s constitution protect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, as does the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights<\/a>, which China has signed and signaled it will ratify. The Human Rights Council has in the past stressed<\/a> the \u201cneed to ensure that the invocation of national security\u2026is not used unjustifiably or arbitrarily to restrict the right to freedom of opinion and expression\u2026,\u201d including \u201cdiscussion of government policies and political debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Background of criminal case & rights advocacy<\/em><\/p>\n

Wu Gan was initially seized on May 20, 2015, outside a courthouse in Nanchang City in Jiangxi, where he had gone to support rights lawyers working on a death penalty case involving defendants who claimed they had been tortured to confess. After Wu served a 10-day administrative detention, police from Fujian criminally detained him on May 27 on suspicion of \u201clibel\u201d and \u201cpicking quarrels and provoking trouble.\u201d In July 2015, the Xiamen City People\u2019s Procuratorate approved Wu\u2019s formal arrest for \u201cpicking quarrels\u201d and \u201cinciting subversion.\u201d In January 2016, Wu\u2019s case was transferred to Tianjin, where many other 709 Crackdown detainees were being held, and police re-started the period of investigation on his case, claiming that new evidence had emerged. On January 3, 2017, authorities at the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People\u2019s Court\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0that Wu had been formally indicted.<\/p>\n

Prior to his current detention, Wu Gan, widely known by his screen name \u201cSuper Vulgar Butcher\u201d (\u8d85<\/span>\u7ea7\u4f4e\u4fd7\u5c60\u592b), or \u201cThe Butcher\u201d (\u5c60\u592b<\/span>) for short, had been detained, threatened, and interrogated many times for his human rights activism. A military veteran, Wu later worked as a security guard at the Xiamen Gaoji International Airport for over a decade. He resigned in 2008 and turned to blogging and activism. In 2009, Wu became well-known for his campaigns on several high-profile cases, such as that of waitress\u00a0Deng Yujiao (<\/a>\u9093\u7389\u5a07<\/span>)<\/a>, who killed a government official who tried to sexually assault her in Hubei, and a\u00a0forced confession<\/a>\u00a0case in Kunming in Yunnan Province, when police accused a father of prostituting his middle school-aged daughters. Wu\u2019s father, Xu Xiaoshun, has also faced persecution as a form of \u201ccollective punishment.\u201d Xu was detained in Fuzhou in 2013 and held for seven months before being released on bail. He was seized a month after Wu Gan was detained in 2015, and tried on charges of \u201cevading official duties\u201d in March 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, January 4, 2017) \u2013 The lengthy prison sentence recently given to activist Wu Gan (\u5434\u6de6) is a blatant violation of his universal right to free expression and peaceful assembly. CHRD calls on the Chinese … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinacivilrights.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}