In the first completed trial of the infamous lawyer crackdown in China, a human rights activist who used to work at a Beijing law firm has been given a suspended three-year prison term.
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The court also suspended Zhou’s political rights for five years. State media on Wednesday said Hu confessed to being deeply connected to “foreign anti-China forces” and had conspired with members of the Fengrui firm about “how to get lawyers involved with sensitive incidents”.
The same court announced the sentences for another two men related to Zhou respectively on Tuesday and Wednesday. Zhou, a Chinese lawyer, was in court Thursday in the third of a series of subversion trials demonstrating the ruling Communist Party’s determination to shut down independent human rights activists and government critics.
Activists such as Hu and Zhai worked alone or in affiliation with law firms to gather evidence of government abuses and lead clients and the disgruntled in street protests while spreading word online. The prosecutors said, “He was using the legal vessel of Christianity to do illegal things, to disseminate his subversive thoughts”.
Since 2011, Zhou has attacked the socialist system and the “one country, two systems” policy that applies to Hong Kong and Macao, the two special administrative regions, and incited confrontation, the statement said.
The sentence was seen as a signal to other lawyers the government will not tolerate those who represent dissidents. Zhou has always been influenced by anti-China forces and gradually established ideas to overturn the country’s political system, state-run Xinhua news agency was quoted as saying in the court statement. “My actions have brought instability and risks to society”.
Yuan Shanshan, the wife of detained Chinese lawyer Xie Yanyi, carries her child as she talks to a police officer while other plain clothes security personnel film journalists near the Tianjin court on Tuesday. More than a dozen others remain jailed, their legal status uncertain. It said he would not appeal.
Zhou hired them to distort facts, cause confusion and social instability, and attack the country’s judicial system, according to Huang. About 300 people were initially seized and questioned before most were released. CCTV cameras and follow-up investigations confirmed that Li had acted within the law.
Zhou instructed his employees to post online articles that distorted the facts in an attempt to influence public opinion and misrepresent the incident as police brutality.
He said in written testimony about the conference: “If there is any civil movement in mainland China, I could make use of what I learned to organise people to oppose the government”.
Zhou said his activities such as disrupting judicial orders aroused the interests of some overseas forces.
Amnesty International has accused the Chinese government of “relentless suppression of human rights lawyers and activists”. Zhou was apparently not allowed to select his own defense attorney; his lawyer, Yang Jinzhu, has said that when he tried to visit Zhou, court authorities refused his request and claimed that Zhou had engaged another attorney.
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The leader noted that most of Chinese lawyers are reliable and a handful of offenders do not represent the mainstream of the profession.
