2015-07-02
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Activist Wu Gan stages protest outside Jiangxi High Court, May 19, 2015.
Photo courtesy of Boxun
Authorities in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian have frozen the bank accounts of the wife of activist Wu Gan, who now faces three criminal charges over online criticism of the government and advocacy for freedom of speech.
Wu’s wife Song Kai was unable to draw money from accounts in her name at two separate banks on Wednesday, which contained donations from overseas activists to help with the couple’s daily living expenses, Wu’s lawyer told RFA.
“That’s right, that is the situation according to my knowledge,” lawyer Yan Xin said, when asked to confirm an earlier report on Twitter.
Song had hoped to received donations from online activists and supporters of Wang, who sent the couple some 200,000 yuan (U.S. $32,000) in total to help with living costs and legal fees.
Wang, known by his online nickname “The Butcher,” was initially detained by police during a performance protest he titled “selling my body to raise funds” in Nanchang city in eastern Jiangxi province.
He was trying to help finance a legal defense for Huang Zhiqiang, Fang Chunping, Cheng Fagen, and Cheng Lihe, who were jailed in Jiangxi’s Leping city for robbery, rape, and dismembering a corpse.
The four received suspended death sentences in 2000 that were later commuted to jail terms, but their lawyers and rights activists say their confessions were obtained through torture, and that the men are victims of a miscarriage of justice.
Calls have been growing among China’s embattled legal profession for a retrial, but Jiangxi provincial high court president Zhang Xianhou has so far refused permission for any lawyers to review the evidence files held in the provincial court archives.
Wu, 42, was handed a 10-day administrative sentence by police, which can be handed down to perceived troublemakers without the need for a trial, but was then immediately placed under criminal detention on more serious charges.
Now, police in Wu’s home province of Fujian have recommended state prosecutors formally arrest activist Wu, while critical articles about him have appeared in China’s tightly-controlled state media.
Wu now faces charges of “libel,” “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” and the more serious “incitement to subvert state power.”
“Both the official media attack against Wu and the new ‘inciting subversion’ charge point to the aggressive campaign of President Xi Jinping’s administration to stifle China’s civil society,” the overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said in a statement on Thursday.
“Wu’s unconventional advocacy campaigns … combine spirited online speech, humor, and street performances,” the group, which translates and collates reports from rights groups inside China, said.
Targeting accounts
A May 28 article in the state-run news agency Xinhua repeated the claims of slander against Wu, hitting out at him for his criticism of the police shooting of a man at a railway station in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang in May.
Wu likely drew the ire of authorities by expressing doubts online over the credibility of the government’s investigation of the killing, CHRD said.
