MAY 7, 2014
HONG KONG — Rejecting defense arguments for leniency, a court in southern China sentenced a Hong Kong publisher to 10 years in prison on Wednesday for smuggling industrial chemicals. The family and supporters of the publisher, Yiu Mantin, has said the charges were a political vendetta brought on by his plans to publish a book condemning the Chinese Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping.
Mr. Yiu, a retired engineer, forged a second career as a small publisher who issued books on subjects and by authors taboo in mainland China. One of his planned ventures before his arrest last year was a critical polemic about Mr. Xi by Yu Jie, a Chinese writer in exile in the United States.
The police in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese city adjacent to Hong Kong, detained Mr. Yiu after he crossed the border last November and alleged that he had made trips to smuggle deceptively labeled chemicals to avoid taxes and duties. Ding Xikui, a lawyer for Mr. Yiu, said his client had acknowledged some wrongdoing, but Mr. Ding and another defense lawyer had argued at the trial in March for a light sentence, claiming Mr. Yiu was not the main culprit.
But the court in Shenzhen found Mr. Yiu guilty and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, Mr. Ding said in a telephone interview from Beijing. He said he did not attend the announcement of the verdict, but his colleague who did sent him the judgment against Mr. Yiu.
“”He shouldn’t have been sentenced as heavily as the businessman who involved him in this,” Mr. Ding said. “This verdict wasn’t appropriate.”
Mr. Ding said he was unsure whether the Mr. Yiu, 72, would appeal or request early release, given his age.
Mr. Yiu’s supporters have argued that the charges were selectively used against him, because of his publishing activities, even if he did acknowledge some culpability. Publishers and journalists in Hong Kong have said that increasing pressure from Chinese authorities, including indirect commercial threats, has eroded the city’s freedom of expression. Some have alleged that an attack on a prominent editor in February was intended to send a chilling message to the media.
Mr. Yiu settled in Hong Kong in 1982 after moving from Sichuan Province in southwest China. He has also used the Mandarin Chinese rendering of his name, Yao Wentian. He established Morning Bell Press in 2006, publishing works by Chinese dissidents, exiled scholars and former officials.
The Chinese government bans such books as “politically harmful,” and tries to confiscate them from the many Chinese nationals who visit Hong Kong, which maintains its own laws and administration that protect much more robust free speech than in the mainland. In March, another Hong Kong publisher issued the book on Mr. Xi that Mr. Yiu planned to publish.
“I’m still convinced that this sentence was so heavy because of political considerations,” said Meng Lang, a poet and publisher in Hong Kong who previously worked at Mr. Yiu’s tiny publishing house. “If you took away the politics, then the sentence would have been much lighter, and Yao Wentian might not have ever been targeted to begin with.”
