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Chinese journalist Gao Yu pictured during an earlier visit to Hong Kong. SCMP Pictures

Veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu ‘had no choice’ but to confess guilt before early release from prison, legal experts say

Legal experts say jailed veteran Chinese journalist was released early on medical grounds in return for ‘face-saving’ admission

While dissident journalist Gao Yu was said to be released from her 20-month detention on state secret charges for medical reasons, the outcome of her case actually hinged upon one thing: a confession.

State media said Gao, 71, who has heart disease and high blood pressure, was allowed to serve her sentence outside jail due to her “severe illnesses”.

Just a few hours before the announcement, Gao, who had earlier insisted on her innocence, pleaded guilty at an appeal hearing at a high court in Beijing, which cut Gao’s original jail term of seven years to five, said a Xinhua report headlined “Gao Yu confesses and regrets her guilt.”

People familiar with the third-time jailed journalists said a confession was out of character for the normally spirited woman. Gao wrote in her memoir that state security agents tried to extract a confession from her in 1997 as a condition of her release, but she refused. But during her latest ordeal, she had confessed twice.

In May last year, two weeks after she was detained, she admitted on state television that she “breached the law and endangered national interests”. At the time, she was told a confession would mean she and her son, who was detained along with her, would be released. But in the end, only her son was released.

She retracted her confession during her trial the following November, saying it was extracted under coercion. Gao was sentenced to seven years in jail in April. The verdict said she had sent an electronic version of a Communist Party circular known as “Document No9 to the US-based website Mingjing in 2013, although both Gao and Mingjing denied it .

Gao’s health deteriorated in the following months and lawyers pressed for her release her on medical grounds. The authorities put pressure on her to plead guilty as a condition for her release and she resisted, family and lawyers said.

Legal experts say political prisoners in China are often pushed to own up their supposed guilt in the absence of evidence to incriminate them, even though confessions alone are not allowed as evidence against defendants under Chinese law.

Slogans on walls of most police interrogation rooms read: “Those who own up are generously dealt with, those who resist are harshly dealt with.”

“(Confession) is the minimum requirement,” said lawyer Shang Baojun, who represented Gao, on the situation generally. “They say that if suspects tell the truth, they will get leniency.”

Liang Xiaojun, a director of the Beijing Daoheng Law Firm, said extracted confessions were often a “face-saving” way out for authorities – an attempt to prove that they are right in detaining someone even when they find little evidence of an offence and also to smear the government critics they want to rein in.

“In many political cases, the defendants have not actually committed any crime, but the authorities force them to admit they’re guilty and use this as a bargaining chip,” Liang said.

The authorities often first arrest people they see as troublemakers, raid their homes to look for incriminating evidence and pressure them to admit a crime, then use catch-all charges such as public order or state security charges to indict them, he said.

Eva Pils, a China law expert at King’s College, London, said TV confessions by “suspects” at the early stages of detention were against the spirit of the rule of law and intended to establish a presumption of guilt in the mind of the public. She said the fact that Gao withdrew her “admission” at her initial trial and “confessed” again when she was seriously ill “weakened the credibility of her confession”.

“Assuming the authorities would not have released her on medical parole without an admission of guilt, Gao effectively had a choice between ‘confessing’ again or allowing her health to deteriorate further,” Pils said.

Legal experts also say that under Chinese law, it is not a requirement for a defendant to confess as a condition for release or a reduction in sentences, except for suspended sentences.

Gao’s lawyer Mo Shaoping said her release “was a result of plea bargaining with Chinese characteristics” as there is no plea-bargaining mechanism under Chinese law.

“If the facts are clear... you don’t need to force people to admit their guilt,” Mo said, adding that under Chinese law, confessions without supporting evidence should not lead to incrimination, but in reality they happened often.

Ching Cheong, a veteran Hong Kong journalist who was jailed on the mainland for three years on trumped-up espionage charges, said when he was detained in 2005, he was ordered to pick a charge to confess to before he could call his family.

He said forced confessions amounted to mental torture and instilled fear and anxiety in detainees – factors that likely contributed towards Gao’s ailing health in custody.

On state television Thursday, Gao, with her hair almost completely greyed, looked fatigued and thin during the appeal hearing.

“(Forced confessions) show that they will insist the party is never wrong... and that the party’s interests are always higher than individuals dignity and rights,” Ching said.
 

 

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