Liu Yao, a number one Chinese rights lawyer, will lodge an attraction “within two weeks” in opposition to a 20-year jail sentence for alleged crimes together with extortion and fraud, in line with certainly one of his legal professionals.
Mr Liu’s sentence was one of many harshest but handed down in an in depth crackdown on civil society that has silenced dozens of authorized, labour and ethnic minority activists over the previous 5 years.
Three years in the past Ilham Tohti, an advocate for China’s Muslim Uighur group, was sentenced to life in jail for allegedly advocating independence for China’s north-west area of Xinjiang. In August 2016 Zhou Shifeng, who headed a Beijing legislation agency on the centre of a marketing campaign in opposition to rights legal professionals, obtained a seven-year sentence for alleged subversion in opposition to the state.
“The chance of Liu Yao winning his appeal will be very low,” stated Li Fangping, who attributed his shopper’s lengthy sentence to his persistent accusations of official corruption in his hometown of Heyuan in southern Guangdong province.
The unique expenses in opposition to Mr Liu, 55, additionally included “endangering state security”, which allowed officers to carry him incommunicado for 9 months with out entry to a lawyer.
The state safety cost was later dropped and seemed to be based mostly on a gathering he had in 2009 with two distinguished abroad consultants on China’s authorized system, Jerome Cohen at New York University and Eva Pils at King’s College London. Police additionally cited a Hong Kong reporter’s title card, discovered among the many a whole lot of title playing cards gathered by Mr Liu, as doable proof of collusion in opposition to the state.
“The authorities wanted to put Liu Yao in a position where they could simply interrogate him and put him under a lot of pressure,” Ms Pils stated.
According to Ms Pils, the 2009 assembly was a routine one which was organized after she and Mr Cohen had learn media stories about Mr Liu’s advocacy work. She described Mr Liu’s 20-year sentence as “quite awful” even within the context of the present draconian crackdown on rights activists throughout China.
Mr Liu, a self-taught lawyer who specialised in “land-grab” circumstances pitting farmers in opposition to native officers and builders, first got here to prominence when he was detained in December 2007 for his involvement in a rural protest.
In 2008 he was sentenced to 4 years in jail, with native prosecutors alleging that development supplies price Rmb50,000 ($7,520) have been broken within the confrontation between Mr Liu’s farmer shoppers and safety guards at a hydropower station.
That sentence for a comparatively minor incident sparked an outcry in China’s authorized group, which rallied to his defence. Prominent rights legal professionals reminiscent of Mr Li and Pu Zhiqiang participated in a collection of appeals that diminished his sentence to 16 months.
Mr Pu, nonetheless, has since been convicted himself within the ongoing crackdown in opposition to rights legal professionals and China’s cowed authorized group has been largely silent about Mr Liu’s present case.
As a end result, Mr Liu’s new 20-year sentence, handed down in April by the Heyuan Intermediate People’s Court, has attracted little media consideration both inside or exterior China. Prosecutors based mostly the extortion and fraud expenses on the negotiations he performed for shoppers with officers and builders.
Mr Liu’s spouse, Lai Wei’e, who organised his authorized defence in 2008, and his eldest son Zhaoxing have additionally been caught up within the newest case in opposition to him. Mr Liu and Ms Lai have been convicted of child-trafficking expenses associated to their adoption of younger boy. Ms Lai was held for a 12 months earlier than being launched and has since been reunited together with her adopted son.
Zhaoxing, 34, is now serving a four-year sentence for allegedly serving to his father submit supplies on-line.
Additional reporting by Xinning Liu