No family member attended the hearing, but Zhai claimed that was his choice.
Advertisement
Zhai was given a suspended sentence in a separate trial on Tuesday. Chinese authorities should immediately drop all charges against the lawyers, legal assistants, and rights activists detained in connection with the sweep of July 9, 2015.
Some family members and lawyers have also been detained after seeking information.
A police vehicle passes by the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in northern China’s Tianjin Municipality on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016.
Reporters were directed to a local hotel where a transcription of the court proceedings was shown in a screening room.
About 20 are still detained, the BBC said.
A three-year sentence is the minimum allowed for those convicted of subversion, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
In the video, Wang renounced her legal work and blamed “foreign groups” for instilling unsafe notions in her. “I am Chinese, and I only accept the Chinese government’s leadership”, she said robotically.
Friends and associates of Wang have said they believed the confession was made under duress, like a number of other broadcast confessionals in the last two years.
A founder of the China Freedom and Democracy Party in 1991, Hu has been a prominent dissident and writer for decades. Roughly 300 lawyers and activists were initially seized and questioned before the majority was released.
China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, said in a statement on the eve of the trials that “the use of “national security”-related charges to target human rights lawyers and activists has become a hallmark of [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping’s reign”.
Together with several human rights lawyers he had “plotted to overthrow state power, adopting a systematic style of government-overthrowing thought”, it added.
Hu pleaded guilty at the Second Intermediate People’s Court in the northern city of Tianjin and said he would not appeal, the court said on a verified social media account. He also pledged he would not talk to any foreign media or media “hostile” to Beijing. Zhou and others were assigned government-appointed lawyers who work closely with the court.
The Global Times, a Party-run tabloid, said Wang had told the paper she was “ashamed and remorseful” for her actions, though rights groups have condemned in the past such confessions in state media which they say are coerced.
“I just wanted to smear the judicial organs, police and government”, confessed Hu, adding that all these efforts were meant to promote his “peaceful transition” theory, which he had advocated on multiple occasions to lawyers and petitioners. He apologized for causing “terrible, negative social influence” and “disturbing the social order”.
Advertisement
Zhai’s three-year sentence was suspended for four years, meaning that although he won’t go to prison, he will have to live under considerable restrictions and supervision. While he will not serve his sentence in jail, he is banned from activism and will be heavily supervised by state police.
