A prominent Chinese lawyer is expected to be freed after a Beijing court on Tuesday gave him a suspended jail sentence after finding him guilty in a case involving online comments critical of the ruling Communist Party.
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Experts say the suspended sentence means Pu can avoid serving time in jail, but could be monitored during the suspension period.
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According to Xinhua, the court ruled that those posts inflicted negative impact on society, given that Mr. Pu, as a professional lawyer and public figure, “wielded a certain degree of influence online”. “It is hard for him not to comment during the three-year probation”.
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The verdict means for the next three years, Pu will be subject to monitoring by the police and needs permission to leave Beijing.
During the open trial last week, Pu only expressed his willingness to apologize to anyone, who was offended by his “sharp, caustic and sometimes vulgar” comments online and insisted that his actions did not warrant the two charges.
Amnesty International criticised the guilty verdict as a “gross injustice”, but welcomed the deferred sentence.
Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, escaped jail after he was convicted of “inciting racial hatred”.
The 50-year-old was detained in May 2014 after he attended a meeting in a private home to commemorate the suppression of pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Plain clothes security personnel escort a supporter of human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang away from journalists near the No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing on December 22, 2015.
Kit Chan, the executive director of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group based in Hong Kong, said in a telephone interview that the sentencing of Pu “has many problems”, and Pu’s case was “fundamentally unjust”.
He had already spent almost 19 months in detention before his trial last week, which lasted just over three hours.
Police standing outside the courtroom as Pu gets sentenced.
State news agency Xinhua said the court decided “to impose a lenient punishment [due to] the fact that the defendant, Pu Zhiqiang, truthfully confessed to the facts of the crime and positively pleaded guilty”.
However, the court did find Pu guilty, accepting the Communist Party’s assertion.
Pu’s lawyer Shang Baojun told South China Morning Post that his Advocate licence would be permanently revoked as lawyers who have been convicted are barred from practising by law. “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.
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Ren Jianyu, a former lower level official who was represented by Mr Pu after he was sent to a hard labour camp for criticising authorities, said the sentence was unjust.
