{"id":24432,"date":"2011-12-27T19:12:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T19:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=24432 "},"modified":"2011-12-27T19:12:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T19:12:00","slug":"24432-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=24432","title":{"rendered":"Beijing Condemned for Recent Jailings By UN"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, condemns the harsh prison sentences given to Chinese pro-democracy activists Chen Xi on Monday and Chen Wei on Friday. She says these convictions, which follow that of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng in mid-December, represent another serious setback for the protection and promotion of human rights in China.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">The U.N.&#8217;s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, says she is disturbed by what appears to be an escalating clampdown on the activities of human rights defenders in China.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Her spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, tells VOA the 10-year prison sentence handed down on pro-democracy activist Chen Xi by a Chinese court on Monday is the third such case in just 10 days. He was convicted for allegedly inciting subversion.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">She notes prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng was ordered to serve a three-year sentence on December 16, just as his five-year probation was due to expire. And, just one week later, she says leading human rights activist Chen Wei was sentenced to nine years for allegedly inciting subversive writing.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">&#8220;So, we are very alarmed at what appears to be a very unfortunate trend going on in terms of restrictions against the activities of human rights defenders and freedom of expression in China over the past few days&#8230; It is a setback for the enjoyment of human rights in China&#8230;and we call upon the Chinese authorities to reverse this trend and to release any persons for peacefully exercising their freedom of expression.&#8221;<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">Shamdasani says High Commissioner Pillay firmly believes that respect for human rights is a universal yearning, and freedom of expression is a fundamental right. The spokeswoman says the high commissioner always stresses to governments that efforts to repress these rights are doomed to failure in the long run.<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><div><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">&#8220;Despite the attempt of states to repress this right, it cannot succeed in the long term at establishing a stable society,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It cannot succeed in the long term by keeping human rights languishing out of the country. It just works. You have seen recently with the Arab Spring as well where a lot of governments had devoted considerable resources to trying to suppress the human rights movement. It did not work. It cannot work.&#8221;<\/span><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><span style=\"color: #2d2d2d; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 12pt; \">Continue reading&nbsp;<\/span><strong style=\"color: #2d2d2d; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: #ffffff; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/english\/news\/asia\/east-pacific\/UN-Official-Concerned-About-Chinas-Clampdown-on-Human-Rights-Defenders-136222488.html\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #034af3; \"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">original article<\/span><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; \">.<\/span><\/strong><span style=\"color: #2d2d2d; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; background-color: #ffffff; \">&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;Concerned about the recent crackdown on defenders of human rights, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called the convictions a major setback for human rights in China. &amp;nbsp;She called for Beijing to &quot;release any persons for peacefully exercising their freedom of expression.&amp;#8221;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}