In four of the seven posts, Pu had called for reform in Beijing’s policies toward Xinjiang and Tibet and the religious and ethnic in the regions – resulting in charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” for posts that allegedly “provoked ethnic relations… and damaged ethnic unity”.
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Mr Pu’s lawyers said the case centred on seven messages he posted on a Chinese social media platform which criticised government policy and officials.
The 50-year-old is the latest person to be tried in a crackdown on critics of the Communist Party overseen by President Xi Jinping, which has seen hundreds detained and dozens sent to prison.
Human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (C) talks to the media at the compound of dissident artist Ai Weiwei in the Caochangdi district of Beijing on July 20, 2012. They said it would not be decided by “pressure from the West”.
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.
This past summer, Chinese state media ran several editorials denouncing human rights lawyers as venal and self-aggrandizing troublemakers out to destabilize China. The group said at least one foreign journalist was slammed to the ground while others were pushed away from the site or summoned to last-minute meetings with authorities.
Dozens of Pu Zhiqiang’s supporters travelled from across the country, some for thousands of kilometres, to protest outside the courtroom in Beijing.
Police and plainclothes security officers wearing yellow smiley face stickers pushed journalists and protesters away from the court entrance area.
Mr Pu’s lawyer quoted him as saying in court that he was prepared to apologise to anyone offended.
“The embassy of the United States remains concerned that Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent Chinese defense lawyer, is being tried on the vague charges of “inciting ethnic hatred and picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, said Dan Biers, deputy political counselor at the USA embassy in Beijing”.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China also condemned police obstruction outside the courthouse, writing that “this effort to deter news coverage is a gross violation of Chinese government rules governing foreign correspondents, which expressly permit them to interview anybody who consents to be interviewed”.
A diplomat speaking on behalf of the European Union was also shouted down as she delivered a statement outside the court criticising the process.
He was arrested in May 2014 after attending a gathering to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
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Mr Mo said the court did not ask Pu specifically whether he was pleading guilty. In one post, Pu mocked Mao Xinyu, the grandson of Mao Zedong and army general, and Shen Jilan, an octogenarian official whom political commentators uphold as proof that the regime’s legislature is no more than a rubber stamp. A verdict is expected later on Monday. “Pu Zhiqiang is not a criminal”. 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.
