{"id":57313,"date":"2016-06-26T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=57313 "},"modified":"2016-06-26T23:26:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T23:26:00","slug":"57313-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=57313","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Activist Chen Yunfei Is to Stand Trial, Lawyer Says"},"content":{"rendered":"
JUNE 26, 2016<\/span><\/div>
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Chen Yunfei, a Chinese political activist and artist, in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in 2009. His sign urged Communist Party officials to disclose their assets. Mr. Chen was detained more than a year ago visiting the grave site of a victim of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Credit Xiao Xuehui<\/span><\/div>
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BEIJING \u2014 A longtime political activist and artist who has been detained for more than a year in China after visiting the grave site of a victim of the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 is expected to stand trial on Thursday, according to his lawyer.<\/span><\/div>
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The activist, Chen Yunfei, 48, uses performance art to criticize the Communist Party and is a close friend of other Chinese intellectuals, including the author Liao Yiwu, who lives in Germany and is also from Mr. Chen\u2019s home province, Sichuan. Mr. Liao has written about Mr. Chen\u2019s detention.<\/span><\/div>
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The authorities have charged Mr. Chen with \u201cpicking quarrels and provoking trouble.\u201d The police in China have been using the charge in many prominent cases against dissidents. The police also wanted the court to try Mr. Chen on a charge of \u201cinciting subversion of the state,\u201d but that charge has been dropped.<\/span><\/div>
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In 2013, the top legal bodies expanded the definition of the \u201cpicking quarrels\u201d charge to include online writing, and the security forces have wielded it as a legal weapon against liberal voices on the internet and people carrying out protests or other acts judged to be overly critical of the party or the state.<\/span><\/div>
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A document from prosecutors that was posted by Mr. Chen\u2019s lawyer accuses Mr. Chen of taking advantage of having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter to \u201cstart rumors about and libel against our country\u2019s political system on the internet many times.\u201d Twitter is among the foreign websites blocked in China.<\/span><\/div>
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Mr. Chen calls himself a \u201cbeast tamer,\u201d using the term beasts to refer to the Chinese authorities. He has been especially active in trying to keep alive the memory of the massacre of civilians by the military around Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were killed after party leaders ordered the People\u2019s Liberation Army to quash anticorruption and pro-democracy protests started by students. Mr. Chen witnessed the bloodshed.<\/span><\/div>
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Mr. Chen was detained on March 25, 2015, shortly after visiting the grave of a student, Wu Guofeng, who was killed by soldiers in Beijing in 1989. Mr. Chen had traveled to Mr. Wu\u2019s grave site in Xinjin County, Sichuan, with a group of activists and Mr. Wu\u2019s relatives. Xinjin is the home county of Mr. Wu.<\/span><\/div>
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By early April last year, the police had formally charged Mr. Chen.<\/span><\/div>
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On Friday night, Ran Tong, Mr. Chen\u2019s lawyer, posted a message on his microblog saying Mr. Chen\u2019s trial was expected to start at 10:30 on Thursday morning at Wuhou District People\u2019s Court in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan.<\/span><\/div>
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In May 2015, Mr. Liao wrote a blog post for the Independent Chinese PEN Center, which advocates free speech, expressing concern over the detention. \u201cI fear for you, Chen Yunfei, but there is nothing else I can do,\u201d Mr. Liao wrote. \u201cPlease forgive my cowardice.\u201d<\/span><\/div>
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Mr. Liao wrote that \u201cthe Communist Party\u2019s bestial nature has resurfaced, time and again,\u201d especially under the rule of President Xi Jinping.<\/span><\/div>
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Mr. Liao interviewed the parents of Mr. Wu in 2005 and wrote about his death in a book, \u201cBullets and Opium.\u201d Mr. Liao wrote that Mr. Wu, 20, had ventured into the streets of Beijing from his campus in the early hours of June 4, 1989, to photograph the events taking place. In an encounter with soldiers, he was kicked to the ground and fatally stabbed with a bayonet, Mr. Liao wrote. Mr. Wu was said to have gripped the bayonet with both hands before dying.<\/span><\/div>
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Maya Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, mentioned Mr. Chen\u2019s case in a post in May 2015 that discussed a broad crackdown on artists. She wrote that under the \u201ctwisted logic\u201d of the Communist Party, \u201cthere is no reason to spare artists.\u201d<\/span><\/div>
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\u201cThe government has brought censorship to a new level, retaliating against both rumor and humor that depart from official lines,\u201d she added.<\/span><\/div>
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For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>The activist, Chen Yunfei, 48, uses performance art to criticize the Communist Party and is a close friend of other Chinese intellectuals, including the author Liao Yiwu, who lives in Germany and is also from Mr. Chen&#8217;s home province, Sichuan. Mr. Liao has written about Mr. Chen&#8217;s detention.<\/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-57313","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\/57313","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=57313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}