Cops in scuffles at trial of lawyer

Mo Shaoping, Pu’s defense lawyer, told Reuters that Pu had admitted that he wrote the seven microblog posts, apologized if he “caused injury to other people” with the posts, and declared that he had “no intention to incite ethnic hatred or pick quarrels and provoke trouble”.

Police officers take away a supporter of rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang near the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court during his trial in Beijing, Dec. 14, 2015.

The sentence is likely to be delivered on Christmas Day, which the Communist party has historically picked as a good date to bury bad news.

Soon after the trial began, police began violently shoving a crowd of journalists and diplomats – including representatives from the U.S., European Union and Australia – away from the courthouse gates.

“Pu Zhiqiang is not a criminal”.

A search for Mr Pu’s Chinese name on the popular social media platform Weibo said results were blocked because of “relevant laws, regulations and policies”.

“The fact that so many citizens, foreign media, and even diplomats went to the court has made the authorities extremely furious”, said Teng Biao, one of China’s most notable human rights lawyers and now a visiting scholar at Harvard Kennedy School, in a telephone interview. If found guilty, which is seen as a very likely possibility since the charges are deemed to be baseless, with one protester, 65-year-old Zhao Ming stating, “They have found nothing against him”, Pu faces 8 years in prison.

 Despite the heavy-handed police presence, around 40 protesters outside the court chanted in support of Mr. Pu.

Teng Biao, a prominent Chinese human rights lawyers and now a visiting scholar at Harvard Kennedy School, at a restaurant in Beijing, China, on August 14, 2013. Diplomats from 11 countries were said to have been “pushed” and “shoved” after congregating to witness the trail against Pu Zhiqiang on “vague” charges resulting from seven “sarcastic” tweets, and his attendance at a 2014 ceremony commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which Pu reportedly also attended as a student.

Human Rights Watch has criticized that administration of President Xi Jinping, saying his government has “further limited already meager civil and political freedoms” and “carried out a wide-ranging assault on civil society and detained hundreds of activists, targeting lawyers in particular”. His accounts have since been shut down.

Said Xu, the former client: “Pu Zhiqiang told me, ‘You must believe in justice'”. Three of the posts insulted government officials and supporters, including Mao Zedong’s grandson; the other four criticized policies towards minorities such as Tibetans and Uighur Muslims.

For his wife, Meng Qun, Pu’s high-profile case has been a private trial. “The question is how to interpret them – as incitements to hatred or exercising freedom of speech?” he adds.

The court’s verdict, expected in the next few weeks, will be seen as a bellwether for human rights activism in China.

“A guilty verdict will be an indictment of the Chinese government, its law, and its legal system – not of Pu”. The judge could be lenient and hand him a suspended sentence, or put him in jail for as long as eight years, according to his lawyers.