“The Embassy of the United States remains concerned that Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent Chinese defence lawyer, is being tried under vague charges of inciting ethnic hatred and picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
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An outspoken Chinese human rights lawyer went on trial Monday for comments he posted on social media that criticized the ruling Communist government.
One of China’s most outstanding human rights legal professionals, Pu Zhiqiang, stood trial Monday. while cops officers & plainclothes enforcers violently confronted his supporters, reporters & foreign diplomats gathered outside the courtroom.
U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus called on the country to recognize Pu Zhiqiang and Zhang Kai, as well as other human rights lawyers, Wang Yu and Li Heping, as “partners, not enemies of the government” on International Human Rights Day, observed last Thursday, December 10, as reported by Yahoo!
Rights groups and activists have condemned the charges against Pu-which carried a maximum sentence of eight years-and asked for his free release. We need freedom of speech!
Pu’s essentially closed trail was held before Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, and lasted for just three hours and 15 minutes.
The trial finished without a verdict announced, BBC reports.
Pu Zhiqiang supporters gathered outside a Beijing courthouse.
Pu had been criminally detained since he attended a seminar on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in May of 2014.
Mr Pu also posted comments in support of the Tibetan community. “When he’s released, I’ll show them to him so that he’ll know what I was thinking about all this time”, she said.
The posts at the centre of the case include messages questioning a state media account of a deadly knife attack blamed on people from the mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang, and another message accusing Communist Party officials of “lying”.
Small protests outside of the Second Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing were broken up by authorities.
Pu also was instrumental in pushing for the eventual abolishment of the labour camp system, which allowed police to lock up people for up to four years without a trial.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism, saying foreign countries needed to “respect China’s judicial sovereignty” and that law enforcement officials had acted “in accordance with the law”. Mr Pu is believed to have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Beijing prosecutors indicted Pu this May on the two current charges, but dropped charges of “inciting separatism” and “illegally obtaining personal information”.
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Mo said Pu had simply been expressing his views on public events, in the public interest, and that the defense team had argued that no crime had been committed. It said that the trial raised “serious questions of consistency with China’s constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly, opinion and expression”, according to photographs of the statement posted on social media by reporters.
