{"id":37228,"date":"2013-12-26T16:29:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T16:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=37228 "},"modified":"2013-12-26T16:29:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T16:29:00","slug":"37228-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=37228","title":{"rendered":"Liu Ping\u2019s Christmas in Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"
 December 26, 2013<\/div>
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Liu Ping, a democracy advocate, doesn’t talk much about her Christian faith, preferring to talk about politics. But Christmas means something to her.<\/div>
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This has been a very different kind of Christmas. Ms. Liu has been in jail awaiting a verdict on criminal charges, along with the fellow activists Wei Zhongping and Li Sihua. All three have been charged with “illegal assembly” for a gathering they organized in April, while Ms. Liu and Mr. Wei have also been charged with “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order” and “using an evil cult to undermine law enforcement.”<\/div>
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Liu Ping is awaiting sentencing on charges related to her campaign for Chinese leaders to disclose their assets.<\/div>
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Gillles Sabrie for The New York Times<\/div>
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Liu Ping is awaiting sentencing on charges related to her campaign for Chinese leaders to disclose their assets.<\/div>
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Ms. Liu’s trial is the first of what could be several against people calling for about 200 of China’s most senior officials to disclose their assets, expressing widespread belief that corruption has penetrated the very top of the government and ruling Communist Party.<\/div>
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“Usually at this time of year, on Christmas Eve, she’d go to church,” said her daughter, Liao Minyue, by telephone. “I’d be away at university since it’s not a holiday for us, so I didn’t know that much about what she was doing. But she would go to a house church,” referring to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of private homes or public places where people gather to worship outside of the state-run churches.<\/div>
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Like everything in Ms. Liu’s recent life, her faith was firm – and had grown quickly.<\/div>
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In court this month, she read out her “Final Statement.” She described a journey that began in 2009, from a factory worker unknown outside her immediate circles to an internationally known dissident.<\/div>
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And she mentioned her faith, though in just one short line among many about her overriding passion in life: justice. The preoccupation was clear in a series of interviews conducted over more than a year, starting in February 2012, until this most recent detention.<\/div>
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“In order to defend my lawful labor rights, I have been forced from being an obedient, CCTV-watching subject,” she said in the statement, referring to the state-run broadcaster, “to being a petitioner. In the pursuit of justice, I have been transformed into a citizen.”<\/div>
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She continued: “Seeking the political rights of a citizen, I stand at the defendant’s podium, viewed as a rebel.”<\/div>
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Her daughter, who was there when Ms. Liu read the statement in court in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province, said she looked as if she had suffered. Ms. Liu’s lawyers said she had been tortured in detention.<\/div>
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“I hadn’t seen her in a long time,” she said. “She’d gotten thin and looked yellowish. She looked a lot older. But her voice was confident.”<\/div>
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Ms. Liu, 49, dates the start of her political activism to 2009, after she was forcibly retired during restructuring at the Xinyu Iron and Steel plant on a monthly pension of just 400 renminbi, or $66. She fought back and said she won a few hundred renminbi a month more for herself and other laid-off workers from the company.<\/div>
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Next, she tried to become a candidate for the local people’s congress but was thwarted by officials, she said. Finally, she turned her attention to what is probably the single most politically sensitive issue in China today: leaders’ wealth.<\/div>
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“I am innocent,” she said in her statement. “Every step that I have taken, it has all been in the lawful pursuit of equality, freedom and democracy. I have put into action all that I believe in. History will declare my innocence! Praise the Lord! I love this country that has given me life and raised me, and I love my fellow countrymen!”<\/div>
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Yet she was afraid, too. In a Skype message on Feb. 14, 2012, she spoke of a rumored list of people whom security officials wanted to “bury alive.” It included her. The artist Ai Weiwei, detained in 2011 and still unable to travel abroad, was there, as were many other activists who have since been detained.<\/div>
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Ms. Liao expects her mother’s sentence to be heavy. “Ten-plus years, maybe, that’s what her lawyers say,” she said. “Legally, she should be declared innocent, but this is not a legal case. It’s a clear case of persecution.”<\/div>
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“I’m very nervous these days,” Ms. Liao said. “But justice will come one day. I believe in my mother and her innocence. And I support her.”<\/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>This has been a very different kind of Christmas. Ms. Liu has been in jail awaiting a verdict on criminal charges, along with the fellow activists Wei Zhongping and Li Sihua. All three have been charged with &#8220;illegal assembly&#8221; for a gathering they organized in April, while Ms. Liu and Mr. Wei have also been charged with &#8220;gathering a crowd to disrupt public order&#8221; and &#8220;using an evil cult to undermine law enforcement.&#8221;<\/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-37228","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\/37228","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=37228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}