China puts prominent human rights lawyer on trial

“If Pu Zhiqiang is guilty, then we are all guilty”, a 53-year old teacher Qu Biao, said.

Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty International, called Pu’s trial an act of political persecution.

An outspoken lawyer, Pu has defended a string of sensitive figures in China including celebrity artist Ai Wei Wei.

As a lawyer, Pu was known for assiduously keeping his activism within the boundaries of Chinese law. At the court premises, several of Pu’s supporters were involved in a scuffle with the police, which was stopping them from entering the court room. Many of those in attendance said they coordinated through chat groups that authoritie constantly shut down.

“[Pu] should not be subject to continuing repression but should be allowed to contribute to the building of a…”, Biers said before being drowned out and bundled away by bellowing Chinese police officers. They threw one of the protesters the ground and took away others.

The charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, is regularly used to silence critics of the government.

The case reportedly rests on seven posts that Pu made on a Twitter-like messaging service, according to Pu’s lawyers.

In other posts, Pu denounced in sometimes colorful language the Chinese regime’s harsh policies against Tibetan and Uyghur ethnic minorities.

Pu, 50, was detained in May a year ago after attending a gathering to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Since his detention, human rights groups and foreign diplomats have warned over his deteriorating health and called for his release.

Policemen try to stop a foreign video journalist covering rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang’s trial near the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. He faces up to eight years in jail if found guilty.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said in a statement that the authorities’ “effort to deter news coverage is a gross violation of Chinese government rules governing foreign correspondents”. The Chinese government rejects western criticism of its human rights record, saying it is a country with rule of law and that it opposes foreign interference in its domestic affairs.

While the United States expressed concern that Pu was “being tried under vague charges” and urged China to release him, security officials barred foreign diplomats, including from the USA and European Union, and journalists from witnessing the proceedings amid heavy security presence. When reporters tried to interview a USA diplomat outside, he too was pushed around.

Numerous protesters said they had benefited personally from Pu’s legal work, while most said they simply came to support him. They were refused admittance by the police.

His wife arrived at court to see her husband for the first time since his arrest.

“(Pu) admitted the seven microblogs were written by him, there was no issue with it, this is a fact”, Pu’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping, told the Reuters news agency. He also was instrumental in pushing for the eventual abolishment of the labour camp system, which allowed police to lock up people for up to four years without a trial. One accused the Communist Party of “secrecy, cheating, passing the buck, delay” and another criticised its policies towards the troubled Muslim, Uighur-minority province of Xinjiang.

“Pu is a very special person”, his lawyer, Shang Baojun said before the trial.