{"id":69387,"date":"2016-12-25T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-25T10:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=69387 "},"modified":"2016-12-25T10:20:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T10:20:00","slug":"69387-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=69387","title":{"rendered":"China to Try Tiananmen Protest Veteran After Months of Delay: Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">2016-12-23<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p><div>&nbsp;<\/div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2016\/51\/20161223image(64).jpg\" alt=\"20161223image(64).jpg (305&#215;221)\" \/><br \/><div>&nbsp;<\/div>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Activist Chen Yunfei leads a protest against alleged pollution at a petrochemical plant in Pengzhou, in Sichuan province, March 6, 2015.<\/span><\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Photo courtesy of an RFA listener<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Chen Yunfei, a veteran rights activist in the southwestern Chinese province  of Sichuan who was detained after visiting the grave of a Tiananmen massacre victim in 2015, will stand trial on Dec. 26 on public order charges following repeated delays to his case.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Former Tiananmen Square protester Chen, 48, was initially detained on subversion charges on March 25, 2015 near Sichuan&#8217;s provincial capital, Chengdu, after visiting the grave of Tiananmen massacre victim Wu Guofeng along with a group of fellow activists.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">He was to have stood trial in June on charges of &#8220;picking quarrels and stirring up trouble&#8221; after a more serious subversion charge was dropped for lack of evidence.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The trial has now been rescheduled for Monday, Chen&#8217;s lawyer Ran Tong told RFA.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">&#8220;I didn&#8217;t receive the formal notification until I got into the office today,&#8221; Ran said on Friday. &#8220;We have been preparing for some time &#8230; but I will now have to go over the details again in the next couple of days.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Sichuan-based rights activist and author Tan Zuoren said Chen has little in the way of family support, having divorced more than a decade ago, with only an elderly mother left.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">He said he is expecting to be placed under surveillance during the trial, but is hoping that Chen won&#8217;t receive a harsh sentence.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">&#8220;Usually the sentences for picking quarrels and stirring up troubles aren&#8217;t more than three years, so that is something,&#8221; Tan said.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">He said Chen had done nothing wrong, however.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">&#8220;He never did anything bad; only good things, for petitioners, for ordinary people,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The sort of things everybody would approve of.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">No reason needed to jail Chen<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">A rights activist who asked to remain anonymous said Chen is innocent of any crime.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">&#8220;They should find him not guilty, but we&#8217;ll see what the court has to say,&#8221; the activist said. &#8220;They don&#8217;t even need to find a plausible reason [to jail him].&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">&#8220;We will go and support him, because we all have to look out for each other.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The U.S.-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network, a network of Chinese and international rights groups, said Chen&#8217;s detention has violated his human rights in a number of ways.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">&#8220;Chen Yunfei&#8217;s detention is clearly an act of government reprisal against his human rights activism, particularly for his efforts to keep the memory of the events of the 1989 pro-democracy movement alive and to hold the Chinese government accountable for their role in the violent suppression of peaceful protesters,&#8221; CHRD said in a statement on its website.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Chen&#8217;s human rights advocacy and environmental activism have made him a frequent target of police harassment, violent assaults, and arbitrary detention, it said.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">In 2014, the authorities launched a nationwide crackdown on activists and family members of victims of the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square student-led pro-democracy movement in the run-up to the 25th anniversary on June 4.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The government bans public memorials marking the event, and has continued to ignore growing calls in China and from overseas for a reappraisal of the 1989 student protests, which it once styled a &#8220;counterrevolutionary rebellion.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">The number of people killed when People&#8217;s Liberation Army tanks and troops entered Beijing on the night of June 3-4, 1989, has never been confirmed.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Reported by Hai Nan for RFA&#8217;s Cantonese Service, and by He Ping for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><br \/><\/p>  <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/protester-trial-12232016143206.html\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Former Tiananmen Square protester Chen, 48, was initially detained on subversion charges on March 25, 2015 near Sichuan&#39;s provincial capital, Chengdu, after visiting the grave of Tiananmen massacre victim Wu Guofeng along with a group of fellow activists.&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-69387","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\/69387","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=69387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}