2015-04-07
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Activist Chen Yunfei leads a protest against alleged pollution at a petrochemical plant in Pengzhou, in Sichuan province, March 6, 2015.
Photo courtesy of an RFA listener
Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have formally detained a prominent rights activist on subversion charges after he visited the grave of a victim of the 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests, his lawyer said.
Chen Yunfei, 47, a former 1989 Tiananmen activist who has campaigned vigorously for human rights protections and against environmental pollution in the past two decades, was initially detained on March 25 near Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu.
He has been charged with “incitement to subvert state power” and “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” his lawyer Ran Tong told RFA, who said the charges are contradictory, if applied to a single individual.
“This just shows that they just detained him in a big hurry, and now they can’t find excuses,” Ran said. “The charge of picking quarrels and stirring up trouble implies that you are deliberately disturbing public order, but not that you have an aim.”
“Incitement to subvert state power has a clear motive implied; that you are trying to overthrow the political system,” he said.
Ran, who recently visited Chen in a police-run detention center, said the charges are a form of official retaliation for Chen’s years of activism.
“How can a regular person overthrow state power? Only someone as high-ranking as [former security czar] Zhou Yongkang would be able to do that,” Ran said.
“President Xi… told us that we should have curbs on official power, and Chen Yunfei was responding to his call,” he said.
“We are talking about a single individual trying to instigate some sort of monitoring of officialdom, and someone in officialdom taking offense at this,” Ran said.
“Why do they pin such big charges on him? Are citizens forbidden to speak out? This is incomprehensible,” he said.
Political persecution
Fellow activist Luo Kaiwen, who was with Chen when he was detained, said the detention amounts to political persecution by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
“This is political persecution [of Chen] by the Communist Party,” Luo said. “This is a stitch-up.”
He said Chen was detained after visiting the grave of Tiananmen massacre victim Wu Guofeng along with a group of fellow activists.
“How is paying respects to the martyrs of June 4, 1989 subversion?” Luo said. “What quarrels did he pick, or trouble did he stir up?”
“The whole world should speak out on behalf of Chen Yunfei,” he said.
Sichuan-based petitioner Wang Rongwen said the charges seemed “very heavy” compared with Chen’s actions.
“It’s clear that they plan to charge him with a serious crime, otherwise they wouldn’t do this,” Wang said.
“I am definitely worried about him.”
