Pu Zhiqiang: Chinese human rights lawyer gets suspended jail term

“He is no criminal and this guilty verdict effectively shackles one of China’s bravest champions of human rights from practising law”.

The ruling means Pu may be sent to jail if he repeats his criticism or runs afoul of police-imposed rules.

After a prolonged investigation, Pu stood trial on December 14 – more than 19 months after his detention – for several of his online comments that questioned Beijing’s ethnic policies and poked fun at some political figures.

Rights groups, however, condemned the verdict as harsh and unfair, and said it would effectively prevent the lawyer from working, with the threat of jail still hanging over his head. He was also involved in advocating the eventual closing of the labor camp system, which gave the authorities the power to jail dissidents without the benefit of a trial.

The overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders’ (CHRD) network, which collates reports from rights groups operating inside China, hit out at the verdict against Pu, which comes amid a nationwide crackdown on rights lawyers.

Another Weibo user wrote that “we have to understand that Pu is unwilling to plead guilty because doing so is not only dishonest to himself but also a deceit to the country, the government and the public”.

The lawyer regretted that Pu’s guilty verdict “can only be interpreted as a trend, in which, the [state’s] control over speech has worsened”.

Pu, a 50-year-old civil rights lawyer, was detained in May 2014 after attending a seminar remembering the victims of the 1989 massacre in Beijing. Though the government of President Xi Jinping has emphasized the rule of law, the latest ruling is a clear indication that Beijing’s rule of law is inherently differently from that practiced in Western nations. The government has launched a tough crackdown on Islamic extremism in the region, but Pu’s tweet, which followed a terrorist attack a year ago, suggested the attack was “effect not cause” – apparently implying that official policy could have caused some of the problems.

The main accusations against Pu revolve around seven microblog posts on his online accounts, his lawyers say.

Pu had spent almost 19 months in detention before his trial last week, which lasted about three hours.

However, his lawyer Shang Baojun said Pu has long insisted in his innocence. He was featured on the cover of a respected Chinese magazine as “person of the year in legal affairs” and has been praised by the state-backed press. “Either way, we would support him”, he said.

“The Communist Party saves faces, so does lawyer Pu”.

His family said he had pleaded not guilty to all charges. “So speaking for the common people is a crime?” yelled one tearful woman as she was roughly shoved into a police van by a uniformed officers and people in civilian dress that assist them at events like this in China.