{"id":35747,"date":"2013-09-19T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=35747 "},"modified":"2013-09-19T21:19:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T21:19:00","slug":"35747-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=35747","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Dissidents Jailed Ahead of Moon Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"
2013-09-19<\/div>
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Beijing residents view the moon from a bridge at Taoranting Park in Beijing on the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, Sept. 19, 2013.<\/div>
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Chinese authorities have formally arrested or sentenced a number of anti-graft and human rights activists on the eve of the traditional mid-autumn moon festival, rights groups said on Thursday.<\/div>
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Authorities in the central province of Hubei formally arrested Liu Jiacai, an activist in the nascent New Citizens’ anti-graft movement, for “disturbing public order,” paving the way for a trial, a Chinese rights group reported ahead of Thursday’s Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.<\/div>
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Liu Jiacai was initially criminally detained by police in Hubei’s Yichang city on the more serious charge of “incitement to subvert state power” after he had completed a 10-day administrative sentence handed down by police, rights activists and relatives said earlier this month.<\/div>
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But Hubei-based activist Liu Feiyue, who runs the People’s Livelihood Watch website, said any charges against Liu were unjust, as his actions had been entirely legal and reasonable.<\/div>
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“Liu Jiacai’s action in Yichang [city] were rights defense work of an entirely legal and reasonable kind,” Liu Feiyue said. “He took part in meal gatherings with the New Citizens’ Movement, all of which were legal.”<\/div>
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Liu had recently become active in the movement, which targets ruling Chinese Communist Party officials for graft, and has staged public protests since March, demanding they reveal their assets.<\/div>
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“This is yet another case of suppression of the New Citizens’ Movement, which is a violation of human rights,” Liu Feiyue said.<\/div>
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‘Disturbance’<\/div>
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Meanwhile, a court in Shanghai sentenced two activists on charges of “creating a disturbance” in apparent retaliation for their longtime rights activities and petitioning, the overseas-based China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group said in an e-mailed statement.<\/div>
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The city’s Zhabei District People’s Court on Tuesday handed a 30-month jail term to long-term activist and petitioner Wang Kouma after holding him for nearly one year.<\/div>
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The same court sentenced fellow activist Wei Qin to 27 months’ imprisonment during a trial closed to foreign journalists and supporters of the two men.<\/div>
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Wang Kouma had previously served a two-year prison sentence for seeking to expose the circumstances surrounding his mother’s suspicious death and the role local officials played in it.<\/div>
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Meanwhile, a labor activist in the eastern province of Zhejiang found himself without a job ahead of the festival after he took part in protests outside local government offices in a bid to recover unpaid wages.<\/div>
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Guo Xizhen, a former worker at the Aiteli shoe factory in Zhejiang’s Wenzhou city, said he had been fired with no pre-festival wages.<\/div>
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“This happened yesterday evening,” he said in an interview on Thursday.<\/div>
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Millions of Chinese look forward to the nation’s traditional moon-viewing and cake-eating festival, which typically features poetic couplets, moon-gazing picnics, and colorful lanterns.<\/div>
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The Mid-Autumn Festival, which often runs into the Oct. 1 National Day holiday, starts on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, when the harvest moon appears at its roundest and largest.<\/div>
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This year’s Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Sept. 19.<\/div>
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Reported by Xin Yu for RFA’s Mandarin Service and by Grace Kei Lai-see for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.<\/div>
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 <\/div>Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>the<\/span><\/a> <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>original article<\/a><\/a><\/a>.<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span> <\/a><\/span><\/strong>
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<div><div>Liu Jiacai was initially criminally detained by police in Hubei's Yichang city on the more serious charge of "incitement to subvert state power" after he had completed a 10-day administrative sentence handed down by police, rights activists and relatives said earlier this month.<\/div><\/div><\/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-35747","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\/35747","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=35747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}