{"id":57819,"date":"2016-07-17T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=57819 "},"modified":"2016-07-17T18:44:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T18:44:00","slug":"57819-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=57819","title":{"rendered":"After Four Detainees of the \u2018709 Incident\u2019 Are Indicted, Chinese State Media Name Foreign News Organizations, a US Congressman, & Three Embassies in Beijing as \u2018Foreign Anti-China Forces\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 15, 2016<\/span><\/p>

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On late Friday afternoon on July 15, the Second Branch Procuratorate of the Tianjin People\u2019s Procuratorate announced on its official Weibo account that four of the several dozen lawyers and activists detained since July 2015, in what is known as the \u201c709 Incident\u201d or \u201c709 Crackdown,\u201d have been indicted. The message was quickly re-posted and reported by People\u2019s Daily and other mouthpiece media:<\/span><\/p>

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On July 15, 2016, the Second Branch Procuratorate of the Tianjin People\u2019s Procuratorate, upon review, has decided according to law to indict Zhou Shifeng, Hu Shigen, Zhai Yanmin, Gou Hongguo respectively in the Tianjin Second People\u2019s Intermediate Court for the alleged crime of subversion of state power.<\/span><\/p>

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Zhou Shifeng is the director of Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, and over his legal career has represented many victims of social injustice and political persecution, including victims of contaminated milk powder in 2008 and, more recently, the 82-year-old writer Tie Liu who was arrested in 2014 for his writing. The other three are activists, among them Hu Shigen, who was a political prisoner for 16 years from 1992 to 2008, and a house church leader in Beijing.<\/span><\/p>

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A few hours later on Friday evening, Legal Daily, a state outlet, posted two commentaries similar in composition and views. They were quickly reposted by other media and the major internet portals. As state media have done over the past year on television, in print media, and online, the two articles repeated the same attacks on China\u2019s human rights lawyers and activists.<\/span><\/p>

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Without the rule of law and press freedom, China\u2019s rights defense movement early on developed a model of simultaneously using multiple instruments of pressure: lawyers worked together with liberal journalists, intellectuals, and activists to challenge injustice in court and publicize cases online, while citizen activists congregated on site to provide support. Social media has made this kind of networking much easier and more efficient. But the reality remains that right lawyers and social activists lose most cases, and win only a few.<\/span><\/p>

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But the government has not stopped at merely suppressing them \u2013 with the 709 crackdown, it has escalated its hostility to a new height.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>

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In language reminiscent of Mao-style political purges, the article, titled \u201cZhou Shifeng and the others deserve to be indicted for endangering state security,\u201d describes the legal fight for freedom of expression, religious freedom, social injustice, and even for issues like food safety and women and children\u2019s rights, as \u201cchallenging state security and the fundamental political system.\u201d These were called \u201ccriminal activities aimed at subverting state power.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

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In any case, this defines, unequivocally, the government\u2019s thinking and motivation behind the 709 crackdown.<\/span><\/p>

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The other article, titled \u201cHow Zhou Shifeng and others fell into an abyss, step by step,\u201d describes the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm as \u201ca premeditated, planned, organized clique that collides with foreign anti-China forces.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>

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Both articles direct their ultimate criticism at the \u201cforeign subversive forces.\u201d One of them says:<\/span><\/p>

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Inevitably, the contestation of global politics has always infiltrated, will always infiltrate, everywhere, and it has always been the strong suit of the West to criticize China\u2019s \u2018human rights\u2019 issues. China has been accelerating its comprehensive reforms, and judicial construction and human rights protections are at the forefront. From government to society, countless forces have been working unceasingly, among them lawyers across the board, making efforts without much fanfare. Unable to find an opening [to exploit] anywhere, the West fastens its concern for human rights on a small number of dissidents and those so-called \u2018opinion leaders,\u2019 bankrolling them for their \u2018confrontation.\u2019 As a result, a small number of \u2018rights lawyers\u2019 have become the leverage the West uses for political contestation with China.<\/span><\/p>

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The other article gives examples of individuals and organizations that constitute \u201cforeign anti-China forces.\u201d They include:<\/span><\/p>

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\u201c<\/span>Journalists with the Associated Press and the German public TV Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen that reported on the Fengrui Law Firm.\u201d This assertion is based on photos posted on Fengrui\u2019s website and by its Weibo account;\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>

\u201c<\/span>The famous anti-China American Congressman Chris Smith.\u201d According to the article, Smith strongly condemned the arrest of rights lawyers, \u201cbut in a slip of the tongue acknowledged that he had met with some of the detained lawyers.\u201d \u201cSmith is a 100% anti-China old hand, and has appeared in many anti-China events in the U. S. from 2006 to 2014.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201c<\/span>The foreign ministries of the U. S., Germany, and Britain or their embassies in China issued statements respectively on July 9 that hyped the seriousness of the \u2018709 incident\u2019 and demanded the release of the lawyers involved. In doing so, they attempted in vain to pressure our political system with the pretext of \u2018human rights issues.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201c<\/span>Some Western legal groups and organizations issued open letters to pressure the Chinese government. The American Bar Association even awarded the \u2018International Human Rights Award\u2019 to the detained Wang Yu.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>

The articles also lists supposed collusive activities with foreign forces: \u201cgoing abroad to participate in training on subverting state power;\u201d \u201creceiving foreign funding;\u201d and \u201cposting news on overseas websites.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>

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According to the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, 24 lawyers and activists are currently in custody, including the 24-year-old Zhao Wei, the assistant of lawyer Li Heping. The authorities say she\u2019s been released, but she still appears to be in custody. None of the detained have had access to family-designated lawyers since their detention a year ago.<\/span><\/p>

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It\u2019s increasingly clear that the Chinese communist government is treating the \u201c709 incident\u201d as a focus of international face-off for regime security. It is consistent with an assessment in 2012 by a think tank of the Chinese Ministry of National Security that names rights lawyers, underground religion, dissidents, internet opinion leaders, and disadvantaged social groups as internal conduits for western infiltration. When you laugh it all off and go about your business with China as usual, keep in mind that the \u201c709 incident\u201d exemplifies the political perspective through which Communist China sees itself and its relations with the rest of the world \u2013 nothing less.<\/span><\/p>

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For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>On July 15, 2016, the Second Branch Procuratorate of the Tianjin People&#8217;s Procuratorate, upon review, has decided according to law to indict Zhou Shifeng, Hu Shigen, Zhai Yanmin, Gou Hongguo respectively in the Tianjin Second People&#8217;s Intermediate Court for the alleged crime of subversion of state power.<\/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-57819","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\/57819","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=57819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}