{"id":47120,"date":"2015-05-16T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=47120 "},"modified":"2015-05-16T00:17:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-16T00:17:00","slug":"47120-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=47120","title":{"rendered":"China Indicts Top Rights Lawyer on Ethnic Hatred Charge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2015-05-15<\/div>
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Pu Zhiqiang (C), the lawyer for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, talks to the media at the artist’s studio in Beijing, Nov. 14, 2011.<\/div>
AFP<\/div>
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Authorities in the Chinese capital on Friday indicted a prominent rights lawyer for “incitement to racial hatred” after holding him in detention for more than a year, paving the way for a trial, his lawyer said.<\/div>
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Pu Zhiqiang, 50, is being charged with “incitement to racial hatred,” and “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a year after his detention following an event marking the anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement.<\/div>
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Previous charges, including “incitement to subvert state power,” “incitement to separatism,” and “illegally obtaining citizens’ information” have apparently been dropped, Pu’s defense lawyer Shang Baojun told RFA.<\/div>
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“The second division of the Beijing municipal procuratorate formally indicted him today, although he hasn’t yet received the indictment document,” Shang said.<\/div>
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“There are two charges on the indictment … the police charge sheet previously listed four charges,” he said. “How do I evaluate that? I don’t know yet.”<\/div>
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Shang said he plans to visit Pu in the detention center soon, to discuss strategy ahead of the trial, for which a date has yet to be set.<\/div>
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But he said Pu is highly likely to reject the reduced charges in the same manner as the old ones.<\/div>
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“Previously, he has totally rejected all of the charges in a number of conversations,” Shang said.But he said that a reduction in the number of charges could be a good sign.<\/div>
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“At the very least, we feel a bit better because two charges looks a lot better than four,” Shang said.<\/div>
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Shang said Pu’s wife had expressed “extreme disappointment” at the indictment during a recent phone call, however.<\/div>
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Pu’s arrest on May 6, 2014, on public order charges and “causing trouble” after he attended an discussion forum that called for a reappraisal of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, drew international condemnation, including from Washington.<\/div>
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But China said last week that the U.S. should pay closer attention to its own rights record before criticizing others.<\/div>
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Respected but outspoken figure<\/div>
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Before his arrest, Pu was a highly respected and outspoken figure among China’s embattled rights attorneys, known for representing high-profile dissidents like artist Ai Weiwei and for his public opposition to the now-abolished “re-education through labor” camps.<\/div>
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A second member of Pu’s defense team, Mo Shaoping, said it is too early to say whether the dropping of two of the charges means he will likely receive a light sentence. Chinese courts rarely acquit suspects.<\/div>
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“It’s hard to say, because the penalty for picking quarrels and stirring up trouble is five years maximum, rising to 10 years in serious cases,” Mo said.<\/div>
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For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>Pu Zhiqiang, 50, is being charged with "incitement to racial hatred," and "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," a year after his detention following an event marking the anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement.<\/div><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-47120","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\/47120","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=47120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}