Chinese lawyer gets suspended sentence in online speech case

Since then, Gao has been apprehended, tortured, released, apprehended again, and tortured again, even more severely. “The police can summon him at any time”, he said.

Another group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, also condemned the guilty verdict, saying that the ruling makes a mockery of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “rule of law” and China’s justice system.

According to Xinhua, the court ruled that those posts inflicted negative impact on society, given that Mr. Pu, as a professional lawyer and public figure, “wielded a certain degree of influence online”.

Pu Zhiqiang was found guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and inciting ethnic hatred, Chinese media said, a verdict which his supporters claimed could have seen him jailed for eight years.

While the sentence means Pu will soon be released, he has already served 19 months in jail awaiting trial.

In the online comments targeted by the court, Mr Pu had said that China did not need Communist rule, writing: “Other than secrecy, cheating, passing the buck, delay, the hammer and sickle, what kinds of secrets of governance does this party have?” “He will tell them face to face when time is right”.

Although Pu has argued that his actions should be protected under China’s constitutional guarantees to free speech, he told the court on Tuesday that he has no intention to appeal. “Either way, we would support him”, he said.

The “incitement to racial hatred” charge was based on a number of tweets he sent in the aftermath of the March 1, 2014, knife attack at Kunming railway station, which left 29 people dead and more than 140 injured. One mocked the government’s bungled response to a high-speed train crash that killed 40 people; others criticized the government’s policies in Tibet and the ethnically riven northwestern region Xinjiang.

The trial drew scorn from both human rights groups and foreign governments.

Following the verdict in the morning, authorities were quick to censor discussion of Pu’s case online. But the authorities are likely to limit his activities through a form of detention called “residential surveillance” often used to control dissidents.

The New China News Agency said on Tuesday that Pu was “given a light punishment after a public trial as he confessed his crime honestly, pleaded guilty and repented his guilt”. The prosecution of Pu is widely viewed as an effort by the Chinese regime to silence the lawyer politically. And it’s also worth noting that he was one of several major political cases this year, including a female journalist named Gao Yu. “Certainly he could have been sentenced to prison time – and possibly significant prison time”.

The 50-year-old, who is one of China’s most prominent civil rights lawyers, was detained last year after attending a seminar on the Tiananmen Square crackdown which was held days ahead of the 25th anniversary of the incident. “I wouldn’t try to paint any larger picture of this being a watershed, or this being any sort of turning point in the repression of dissidents”. “He has paid a heavy price for exercising his freedom of speech”, the group said in a statement, calling for an end to China’s ongoing persecution of human rights lawyers.