{"id":51570,"date":"2015-11-27T23:23:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T23:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=51570 "},"modified":"2015-11-27T23:23:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T23:23:00","slug":"51570-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=51570","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Activist Sentenced to 6 Years for Protesting Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/48\/201511278EDAF97B-C047-4F8B-A49B-1D9B2465E01B_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy5_cw0.jpg\" alt=\"201511278EDAF97B-C047-4F8B-A49B-1D9B2465E01B_w640_r1_s_cx0_cy5_cw0.jpg (640&#215;360)\" \/><br \/><div><\/div><div>FILE &#8211; Zhang Qing, left, wife of Chinese human rights activist Guo Feixiong, and daughter Yang Tianjiao speak at a press conference before a hearing of a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee in Washington, D.C., October 29, 2013.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>November 27, 2015 7:52 AM<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>China has sentenced three human rights activists to harsh prison terms for participating in an anti-censorship protest in 2013.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The attorney for the three, Zhang Lei, told VOA that he is &#8220;shocked and angered&#8221; by the verdict, which gave a sentence of six years to activist Guo Feixiong.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Zhang said the court added an extra criminal charge to his client&#8217;s case just moments before Friday&#8217;s trial started.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;The way the court has unilaterally imposed new criminal charges on the defendant is unheard of. It&#8217;s shocking, horrifying,&#8221; Zhang said Friday.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Sentences<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Activists Liu Yuandong and Sun Desheng were sentenced to three years and 2&#189; years, respectively, for participating in the same demonstration.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The three were charged with &#8220;gathering crowds to disturb social order&#8221; and Guo received the additional charge of &#8220;picking quarrels and provoking trouble.&#8221; Both charges are often used broadly against dissidents.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The protest they took part in was a weeklong peaceful demonstration in 2013 outside the headquarters of the Southern Weekly newspaper. The demonstrators called on Beijing to give up censorship practices that affected the paper.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Zhang said he will be filing appeals for all three of his clients.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Zhang also expressed concerns about Guo&#8217;s health, saying his client&#8217;s physical state has deteriorated since his arrest in 2013.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>He said Guo, 48, has been held in a crowded cell and barred from going outside for exercise, in violation of international standards on the treatment of prisoners.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Zhang also said his client was treated roughly in court. He blamed police officers handling Guo for injuring his client&#8217;s arms.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Accusations<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Rights group Amnesty International has said Sun Desheng was forced to wear handcuffs and leg cuffs for a long time while in detention. &nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>And Human Rights Watch has spoken out as well, calling on China to drop all charges against the three.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Rights groups and Western nations have repeatedly expressed concern about Chinese President Xi Jinping&#8217;s broad campaign to crack down on dissent among journalists, activists, and scholars.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/content\/chinese-activist-sentenced-to-six-years-for-protesting-censorship\/3077204.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;The three were charged with &quot;gathering crowds to disturb social order&quot; and Guo received the additional charge of &quot;picking quarrels and provoking trouble.&quot; Both charges are often used broadly against dissidents.&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-51570","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\/51570","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=51570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}