JUNE 26, 2016
Chen Yunfei, a Chinese political activist and artist, in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in 2009. His sign urged Communist Party officials to disclose their assets. Mr. Chen was detained more than a year ago visiting the grave site of a victim of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Credit Xiao Xuehui
BEIJING — A longtime political activist and artist who has been detained for more than a year in China after visiting the grave site of a victim of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 is expected to stand trial on Thursday, according to his lawyer.
The activist, Chen Yunfei, 48, uses performance art to criticize the Communist Party and is a close friend of other Chinese intellectuals, including the author Liao Yiwu, who lives in Germany and is also from Mr. Chen’s home province, Sichuan. Mr. Liao has written about Mr. Chen’s detention.
The authorities have charged Mr. Chen with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” The police in China have been using the charge in many prominent cases against dissidents. The police also wanted the court to try Mr. Chen on a charge of “inciting subversion of the state,” but that charge has been dropped.
In 2013, the top legal bodies expanded the definition of the “picking quarrels” charge to include online writing, and the security forces have wielded it as a legal weapon against liberal voices on the internet and people carrying out protests or other acts judged to be overly critical of the party or the state.
A document from prosecutors that was posted by Mr. Chen’s lawyer accuses Mr. Chen of taking advantage of having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter to “start rumors about and libel against our country’s political system on the internet many times.” Twitter is among the foreign websites blocked in China.
Mr. Chen calls himself a “beast tamer,” using the term beasts to refer to the Chinese authorities. He has been especially active in trying to keep alive the memory of the massacre of civilians by the military around Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were killed after party leaders ordered the People’s Liberation Army to quash anticorruption and pro-democracy protests started by students. Mr. Chen witnessed the bloodshed.
Mr. Chen was detained on March 25, 2015, shortly after visiting the grave of a student, Wu Guofeng, who was killed by soldiers in Beijing in 1989. Mr. Chen had traveled to Mr. Wu’s grave site in Xinjin County, Sichuan, with a group of activists and Mr. Wu’s relatives. Xinjin is the home county of Mr. Wu.
By early April last year, the police had formally charged Mr. Chen.
On Friday night, Ran Tong, Mr. Chen’s lawyer, posted a message on his microblog saying Mr. Chen’s trial was expected to start at 10:30 on Thursday morning at Wuhou District People’s Court in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan.
In May 2015, Mr. Liao wrote a blog post for the Independent Chinese PEN Center, which advocates free speech, expressing concern over the detention. “I fear for you, Chen Yunfei, but there is nothing else I can do,” Mr. Liao wrote. “Please forgive my cowardice.”
Mr. Liao wrote that “the Communist Party’s bestial nature has resurfaced, time and again,” especially under the rule of President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Liao interviewed the parents of Mr. Wu in 2005 and wrote about his death in a book, “Bullets and Opium.” Mr. Liao wrote that Mr. Wu, 20, had ventured into the streets of Beijing from his campus in the early hours of June 4, 1989, to photograph the events taking place. In an encounter with soldiers, he was kicked to the ground and fatally stabbed with a bayonet, Mr. Liao wrote. Mr. Wu was said to have gripped the bayonet with both hands before dying.
Maya Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, mentioned Mr. Chen’s case in a post in May 2015 that discussed a broad crackdown on artists. She wrote that under the “twisted logic” of the Communist Party, “there is no reason to spare artists.”
“The government has brought censorship to a new level, retaliating against both rumor and humor that depart from official lines,” she added.
