2nd subversion trial begins for China legal rights activist

Hu was sentenced to 7 ½ years in prison on subversion charges Wednesday, in the second in a series of cases underscoring the ruling Communist Party’s determination to rein in government critics.

Zhou was the third 709 detainee to be tried in Tianjin this week.

“They actively enticed me, wanted to use us to continue to attack court trials, attack China’s entire trial and judicial system, and bring trouble to the government”.

He was among those detained in a crackdown against rights activists and lawyers past year. About 20 are still detained.

Observers, including the BBC and The New York Times, note that confessions have become par for the course in China and that are increasingly distrusted, even by Chinese citizens.

China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, said the trial “makes a mockery of justice”. Their fate was sealed before they stepped into the courtroom and there was no chance that they would ever receive a fair trial.

Xinhua said the trial would be open and attended by five foreign media outlets and other observers, in an apparent attempt to address vocal criticism from the activists’ supporters about a near-total lack of transparency surrounding the cases.

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.

A day earlier, the same Tianjin court sentenced pro-democracy activist and church leader Hu Shigen to seven and half years in jail, also for subverting state power.

She could still face prosecution for the charge under which she was detained, “subverting state power”.

The main thrust of the case against him seems to be that he encouraged protesters to gather in support of his defendants, a perhaps understandable strategy in a system in which 99.9% of cases end in a conviction.

Zhou Shifeng, a human-rights lawyer and director of the Beijing Fengrui Law firm, was arrested in July 2015 in a wide-reaching crackdown that saw hundreds of people detained. Zhou and others were assigned government-appointed lawyers who work closely with the court.

More than 40 people, including lawyers and journalists from home and overseas, observed today’s trial.

But none of his family members were in court, as he allegedly requested in a letter posted by the court on micro-blogging site Weibo.

Fengrui gained a reputation as a firm that would take on the most hard, and from the government’s perspective, nettlesome cases. The firm has also represented clients targeted by the government, including members of the banned Falun Gong meditation sect and activist artist Ai Weiwei.

A well-known human rights lawyer, Wang Yu, was also set free this month after the release of a video confession in which she apologised, disowned her work, attacked her colleagues and said she received training including in the United Kingdom to “hype up” cases to attack the Chinese government. He said he would not appeal, Xinhua added.

China’s crackdown, which started past year, has targeted the country’s small human rights advocacy movement and involved lawyers tackling cases to do with freedom of speech, religion or abuses of power.