Chinese activists stand trial over censorship protests

Two prominent Chinese political activists went on trial today for helping to organise small-scale protests against censorship, their lawyer said – the latest prosecution in a deepening government crackdown on dissent.

Guo Feixiong and Sun Desheng both face possible five-year prison sentences for their attempts to raise awareness of human rights, their lawyer Li Jinxing said.

The pair are the latest in a series of human rights activists, lawyers, academics and journalists to be jailed or detained in what has been seen as China’s biggest campaign against government critics in years.

Both are writers best known by their pseudonyms and at a court in the southern city of Guangzhou, Guo, whose real name is Yang Maodong, and Sun, whose real name is Sun Sihuo, denied “gathering a crowd to disturb public order” – a charge often used to jail protesters.

China’s courts are controlled by the Communist party and have a near-100 per cent conviction rate, so that the two are almost certain to be found guilty.

Prosecutors said that the activists’ support for protests against censorship at a liberal southern Chinese newspaper last year made them eligible for the maximum sentence, Li said.

”Guo wanted to push forward the progress of society peacefully and rationally, but despite that, the authorities could not accept this,” Li said. “This is a problem for all Chinese people.”