Chinese rights lawyer held for over a year without trial refused bail after court postpones case for three months
Prominent Chinese rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who has been detained for more than a year without trial, has been denied bail after a court postponed his trial for three months, his lawyer said this week.
Mo Shaoping said the Beijing No.2 Intermediate Court told him more than a week ago that his application for police to release Pu on bail was rejected.
Pu was detained by the police in May last year initially on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after attending an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The police later slapped three more charges on him, accusing him of “inciting ethnic hatred”, “inciting separatism” and “illegally obtaining personal information”.
Four months ago, the Beijing People’s Procuratorate’s second branch charged Pu with “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, having dropped the other two charges. His lawyers said at the time he still faces up to eight years in jail.
Pu’s alleged crimes were said by the authorities to be serious because he posted messages on his microblog to “incite ethnic hatred” and “openly insult others” and his acts “damaged social order”.
“No one should be regarded as a criminal before being convicted, but he has now been locked up for over a year – this is against the spirit of the rule of law,” Mo said, citing the reason he gave the court for demanding Pu’s release.
But the court rejected his request, saying Pu’s trial had been postponed for another three months in mid August and that Pu was in reasonable health.
Pu’s family has not been able to visit him. Under Chinese law, detainees are not allowed family visits before they are jailed.
Pu’s wife Meng Qun has pleaded for his release, citing his various chronic illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and prostate problems.
No one at the Beijing No.2 Intermediate Court was available to comment.
Pu, 50, has taken on many high-profile rights cases, including defending artist Ai Weiwei.
He advocated the scrapping of the country’s labour camp system and before he was taken away last year was helping Communist Party members who had been tortured whilst detained without legal process in corruption investigations.
Mo said he has also requested that 71-year-old jailed journalist Gao Yu be released on bail on medical grounds, but the authorities have not replied. In late July, a hospital check showed there were signs of blockages in Gao Yu’s heart arteries and an abnormal nymph node growth in her neck.
Meanwhile, in a nationwide crackdown on rights lawyers that started in July, 284 lawyers and activists and their family members were detained or arrested, or barred from leaving the country, said the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group.
Among them, 21 have been detained on criminal charges or put under “residential surveillance”, a form of detention that can last up to six months. Seven remain missing and are feared detained.
