BEIJING – Hu Jia, a human rights activist and commentator, was tried in a Beijing court yesterday on charges of inciting subversion against the Chinese government through his writings on the Internet.<\/p>\n
Hu’s lawyer, Li Fangping, said the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court would probably hand down its sentence in about a week. Hu, 34, who faces up to five years in prison, pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
Li said he was given only 20 minutes to defend Hu, which he said was not enough time to mount a persuasive case. “When the prosecutor spoke, the judge let him finish,” Li said. “But when I spoke, the judge stopped me and said time was short.”<\/p>\n
Hu was detained Dec. 27 in what was seen as part of a crackdown by Chinese censors and security services to rid the Internet of dissidents in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing this August. Formal charges were filed a month later. His wife, Zeng Jinyan, and their infant daughter, Qianci, were restricted from leaving Hu’s Beijing apartment.<\/p>\n
Zeng had worked with her husband on an Internet site that gathered and relayed dissident reporting and opinion on Chinese websites. She was a witness in yesterday’s trial and was allowed a brief meeting with her husband on the sidelines of the 3 1\/2 hour proceedings.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch, a US-based advocacy group, denounced the legal proceedings against Hu and said the charges were inconsistent with international law because they sought to punish peaceful criticism of the Chinese political system.<\/p>\n
“Hu Jia’s case has been marked by grave rights violations from the start,” Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “His arrest was political, the charges are political and his trial is political.”<\/p>\n
Premier Wen Jiabao, in a news conference, denied that Hu’s case was part of a party campaign to put away dissidents in advance of the Olympics. “I can make it very clear to you that China is a country under the rule of law,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING – Hu Jia, a human rights activist and commentator, was tried in a Beijing court yesterday on charges of inciting subversion against the Chinese government through his writings on the Internet. Hu’s lawyer, Li Fangping, said the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court would probably hand down its sentence in about a week. Hu, 34, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1614],"tags":[81],"class_list":{"0":"post-2737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-human-rights","7":"category-surveillance-big-brother","8":"tag-law"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}