2nd legal activist sentenced as China reins in critics

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese lawyer was in court Thursday in the third of a series of subversion trials demonstrating the ruling Communist Party’s determination to shut down independent human rights activists and government critics.

Hu Shigen pleaded guilty in Tianjin to “damaging national security and harming social stability”, said state media.

It said Hu had decided not to appeal the sentence.

The Communist Party’s punchline, supported by its powerful propaganda apparatus, has been to vilify those on trial as conspiring with agents of foreign governments, warning the general masses that these lawyers were not about standing up for legal and civil rights but seeking to foment a “colour revolution” that would ultimately overthrow the Chinese government.

A Chinese court in Tianjin, 60 miles south-east of Beijing, is this week rolling out a string of court sentences against rights activists and lawyers that observers claim have nearly zero credibility.

Around 300 lawyers and activists have been arrested since a year ago. The majority of them was later released.

He worked with others, some of whom are also facing trial this week, to “organize activities that manipulated public opinion and disturbed public order”, prosecutors were quoted as saying by state media.

State-run media accused him of operating a “criminal syndicate” that masterminded serious illegal activities to incite “social disorder” all in the name of making money. His previous conviction likely contributed to the long sentence imposed this week.

The proceedings were held under air-tight security, with scores of police and plainclothes personnel-identifiable by small gold star pins-stationed for blocks around the court, clustered every few yards and filming those present on camcorders and phones.

Hu has previously served part of a 20 year jail term for “organising and leading a counter-revolutionary group”, “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement” and for distributing leaflets about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.

Gou and Zhou Shifeng, the director of the Beijing-based Fengrui law firm which was the focus of the rights crackdown a year ago, are due to appear in court on Thursday and Friday.

More than a dozen of those detained a year ago remain in custody, their legal fates still unknown.

The trials are part of a pattern established under the administration of President Xi Jinping to use more sophisticated legal means to attack perceived opponents as it maintains pressure on activists and non-governmental organizations.

“The Chinese authorities appear intent on silencing anyone who raises legitimate questions about human rights and uses the legal system to seek redress”, she added.

Several linked to the same Beijing law firm, Fengrui, were arrested. Their actions were harshly denounced by the authorities as interference in the legal process.

The Tianjin court this week also sentenced Zhou’s associates, activists Zhai Yanmin and Hu Shigen, on similar charges.

A police auto passes by the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in northern China’s Tianjin Municipality on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016.

Each trial, from the presentation of evidence to the hearing of prosecution and defence arguments and the verdict and sentencing, took less than half a day – seemingly doing away with the pretence that in Chinese courts, judicial outcomes are anything but predetermined.