Chinese democracy veteran Hu Shigen jailed for subversion
Activist swept up in massive rights crackdown a year ago sentenced to 7½ years
Veteran pro-democracy activist and underground church leader Hu Shigen was sentenced to 7½ years in jail on Wednesday on charges of subverting state power.
The sentencing at the Tianjin No 2 Intermediate People’s Court took place on the second day of hearings against four human rights advocates, including Beijing-based Feng Rui Law Firm director Zhou Shifeng, who will stand trial on Thursday.
The defendants were among those detained in a sweeping crackdown on rights lawyers and activists in July last year. A day earlier, the court ordered rights campaigner Zhai Yanmin to serve a three-year jail term, suspended for four years.
Brothers of Chinese activist barred from trial and forced to return home
Hu, 61, pleaded guilty, saying he had taken the “criminal path” to promote Western-style democracy since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He also confessed he was trying to overthrow the Communist Party and pledged to not take part in any anti-government or anti-party activities in the future.
Hu was accused of sending another activist, Gou Hongguo, to Taiwan to take part in the “Interethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conference” organised by US-based NGO Initiatives for China in 2014. He said he was invited by Yang Jianli, a US-based Chinese dissident and the NGO’s founder.
The conference was attended by “separatists from Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia ... as well as other democracy activists” and they shared views about how to overthrow one-party rule on the mainland through non-violent resistance, the prosecution alleged, adding that this amounted to “colour revolution”.
Gou is due to appear in court in Tianjin this week. In written testimony about the conference, he said: “If there is any civil movement in mainland China, I could make use of what I learned to organise people to oppose the government.”