Jailed Chinese journalist appeals against 'shameless' sentencing

Gao Yu, the 71-year-old mainland journalist jailed for seven years last week for allegedly leaking state secrets, has criticised her sentencing as "shameless" and an affront to legal justice, her lawyer said yesterday.

Lawyer Shang Baojun visited her at a Beijing detention centre yesterday and learned that she had filed an appeal against the Beijing No 3 Intermediate Court's verdict on Friday that she had "illegally provided overseas personnel with state secrets".

"From the points of view of evidence, conviction and the length of the sentence, the verdict was an affront to legal justice," her appeal said. Shang said the appeal document provided by the detention centre allowed enough space for only one sentence from defendants.

"She said she had received jail sentences before and felt those were shameless enough - but the level of shamelessness of her latest sentence was beyond her imagination," Shang said. Gao has served jail terms totalling seven years for her writing.

Shang said the case against Gao lacked evidence, apart from her confession on state television last May, which she had been coerced into making because of threats against her son. He was initially detained along with her but was later released on bail.

Gao's other lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said earlier that the prosecution produced no evidence to support its allegations that Gao used Skype software to send an internal Communist Party circular called Document No 9 to the US-based news website Mingjing in July, 2013, but the court still accepted it as truth.

Mo also said the document, which ordered cadres to tackle seven subversive influences on society, including "Western constitutional democracy" and "universal values" such as human rights and free speech, could not be seen as a "state secret".

Shang said Gao was in relatively good spirits and was strong, as she had always been. He said she planned to spend her jail time reading books. She also asked her lawyer to relay her gratitude to her supporters, in particular Ding Zilin, who lost her teenage son in the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, Bao Tong , a former senior official purged after the event, and detained rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang.

Gao's sentence was widely condemned as another move to muzzle dissent in the crackdown on government critics.

Gao has been detained since April 24 last year and pleaded innocent at her trial in November. She suffers from heart disease, high blood pressure, chronic back pain and a severe skin allergy.