As one of China’s most celebrated human rights lawyers was tried for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, security officials outside the court pushed and shoved journalists covering the trial.
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“Pu’s trial is a litmus test for the Chinese government’s level of hostility towards its civil society and genuine ‘rule of law, ‘” Wang said.
Pu’s closed trial concluded by midday with no verdict announced, his family told reporters. The trial of Pu Zhiqiang, who faces as much as eight years of time of time in jail, is certain to have a chilling impact on different human rights activists who brazenly criticize the authorities, which has-been cracking down on dissent.
“He admitted the facts of the case; that he wrote the tweets, and admitted that they were rather rude, uncivilized, and not ideal”, Mo said. If found guilty, which is seen as a very likely possibility since the charges are deemed to be baseless, with one protester, 65-year-old Zhao Ming stating, “They have found nothing against him”, Pu faces 8 years in prison. Several hundred lawyers have been detained, harassed, or disappeared over the past six months; more than two dozen remain under arrest or unaccounted for, human rights groups say.
Visitors at the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, where the trail was held, included 11 diplomats from countries including the United States, Germany and France besides Pu’s supporters, who had travelled long distances, to show their solidarity for the lawyer.
Authorities dragged at least three people away, an AFP reporter at the scene saw, and shoved at least two to the ground.
Pu is accused of “venting his spleen” online and “using humiliating language”, as well as “harming race relations”, according to the charge sheet.
The statement the European Union diplomat attempted to read was that the blocking of observers from the trial raised “serious questions of consistency with China’s constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly, opinion and expression”.
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.
Mr. Pu has been in detention since May 2014, when he was arrested after attending a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the brutal crackdown on protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in which he participated.
After 18 months of investigation, however, the prosecutor cited just seven comments by Pu on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, as evidence supporting the charges. 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.
Said Xu, the former client: “Pu Zhiqiang told me, ‘You must believe in justice'”.
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The court’s verdict, expected in the next few weeks, will be seen as a bellwether for human rights activism in China. The trail is significant because most of the accusations made against Pu, 50, relate to his critical postings on the social media.
