{"id":46443,"date":"2015-04-07T22:29:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=46443 "},"modified":"2015-04-07T22:29:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T22:29:00","slug":"46443-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=46443","title":{"rendered":"China Formally Detains Sichuan Activist For \\&#8217;Subversion\\&#8217; After Tiananmen Memorial Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>2015-04-07<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/14\/201547image(9).jpg\" alt=\"201547image(9).jpg (305&#215;221)\" \/><br \/><div><\/div><div>Activist Chen Yunfei leads a protest against alleged pollution at a petrochemical plant in Pengzhou, in Sichuan province, March 6, 2015.<\/div><div>Photo courtesy of an RFA listener<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have formally detained a prominent rights activist on subversion charges after he visited the grave of a victim of the 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests, his lawyer said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Chen Yunfei, 47, a former 1989 Tiananmen activist who has campaigned vigorously for human rights protections and against environmental pollution in the past two decades, was initially detained on March 25 near Sichuan&#8217;s provincial capital, Chengdu.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>He has been charged with &#8220;incitement to subvert state power&#8221; and &#8220;picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,&#8221; his lawyer Ran Tong told RFA, who said the charges are contradictory, if applied to a single individual.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;This just shows that they just detained him in a big hurry, and now they can&#8217;t find excuses,&#8221; Ran said. &#8220;The charge of picking quarrels and stirring up trouble implies that you are deliberately disturbing public order, but not that you have an aim.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Incitement to subvert state power has a clear motive implied; that you are trying to overthrow the political system,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Ran, who recently visited Chen in a police-run detention center, said the charges are a form of official retaliation for Chen&#8217;s years of activism.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;How can a regular person overthrow state power? Only someone as high-ranking as [former security czar] Zhou Yongkang would be able to do that,&#8221; Ran said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;President Xi&#8230; told us that we should have curbs on official power, and Chen Yunfei was responding to his call,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;We are talking about a single individual trying to instigate some sort of monitoring of officialdom, and someone in officialdom taking offense at this,&#8221; Ran said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Why do they pin such big charges on him? Are citizens forbidden to speak out? This is incomprehensible,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Political persecution<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Fellow activist Luo Kaiwen, who was with Chen when he was detained, said the detention amounts to political persecution by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;This is political persecution [of Chen] by the Communist Party,&#8221; Luo said. &#8220;This is a stitch-up.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>He said Chen was detained after visiting the grave of Tiananmen massacre victim Wu Guofeng along with a group of fellow activists.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;How is paying respects to the martyrs of June 4, 1989 subversion?&#8221; Luo said. &#8220;What quarrels did he pick, or trouble did he stir up?&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;The whole world should speak out on behalf of Chen Yunfei,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Sichuan-based petitioner Wang Rongwen said the charges seemed &#8220;very heavy&#8221; compared with Chen&#8217;s actions.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;It&#8217;s clear that they plan to charge him with a serious crime, otherwise they wouldn&#8217;t do this,&#8221; Wang said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;I am definitely worried about him.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/sichuan-activist-detained-for-subversion-04072015112254.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Chen Yunfei, 47, a former 1989 Tiananmen activist who has campaigned vigorously for human rights protections and against environmental pollution in the past two decades, was initially detained on March 25 near Sichuan&#39;s provincial capital, Chengdu.&lt;\/div&gt;&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-46443","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\/46443","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=46443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}