A Heavy Price for Free Speech

Pu Zhiqiang will be released soon, but cannot practice law again

Human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was handed a three-year suspended jail sentence for posting online comments that were critical of the Communist Party. While he will be released in days, he will not be allowed to practice law again.

The Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court found Pu, 50, guilty of "inciting ethnic hatred" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble", according to a report by Xinhua news agency.

According to legal experts, the suspended jail sentence means Pu will be put on probation for three years and if he violates the terms or commits offenses in the next three years, he will have to serve his original sentence.

His lawyer, Shang Baojun says lawyers who have been convicted have their lawyer's license revoked. "To be incriminated over one's speech in seven microblog messages -- this is a very heavy price indeed," Shang said.

Amnesty International said the suspended jail sentence was "a deliberate attempt by the Chinese authorities to shackle a champion of freedom of expression".

However, Xinhua said the court handed down a light sentence because Pu "pro-actively confessed to his crimes and showed remorse". It added Pu would not appeal.

We do not know exactly what happened in the court room, but we do know last week that he was adamant about rejecting the charges against him. So what happened between then and now is unclear.

He was convicted on the basis of the content of seven microblog messages that were critical of the government's handling of an ethnic conflict in Kunming, Yunnan province last year, and sarcastic comments about two officials.

Xinhua reported the court said between January 2012 and May 2014, Pu posted messages eight times on various Weibo accounts "to stir ethnic relations and incite ethnic hatred". It said his messages were retweeted 2,500 times and had 1,300 comments, and thus had "provoked internet users' strong ethnic hatred and confrontation feelings", and his behaviour had "posed social danger that has reached a serious level".

As a result, this had caused "psychological damage", and had "lowered [people's] opinions of society", and created "chaos in cyberspace" and a "bad influence in society", and his behaviour had "gravely disrupted social order".

The court makes it sound like Pu was someone disseminating hate literature. While reposting his message 2,500 times is a lot, when compared relative to the number of people in China, it's not a big exposure.

Nevertheless, Xinhua said Pu apologized and showed his willingness to accept punishment during the trial. It added that Pu told the court that through his ordeal, "he has experienced the progress of rule of law, the improvement of the law, and progress of society"...

Was his trial a sign of progress of rule of law in China? The lawyer who suffers from diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, was detained for 19 months without trial and no access to his family.

Beijing has effectively silenced yet another of its critics in a harsh way. He will be made into an example for others to conform even more to the Party line.

But China needs people like him to point out the country's flaws that must be addressed and dealt with. He and others like him want to hold the government accountable so that it will be a more effective one.

How will China's civil society ever be able to flourish when it is so badly needed now?

Human Rights Lawyer on Trial in Beijing

Pu Zhiqiang was on trial yesterday for what he wrote on Weibo

Yesterday one of China's most outspoken human rights lawyers, Pu Zhiqiang defended himself in court on charges of inciting ethnic hatred or "provoked trouble" by writing microblog commentaries critical of the Communist Party.

Pu's lawyer Shang Baojun said the three-hour trial at Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ended with no verdict, though he expected one "very soon".

The trial took place 19 months after Pu was detained by police after he attended a private seminar to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Many believe his detainment and subsequent trial are a way to silence him and warn other rights advocates not to speak out.

Plainclothes police in black masks shoved supporters around

Pu is charged with "inciting ethnic hatred" and "provoking quarrels and provoking trouble" for the content of seven Weibo messages he posted online between July 2011 and May 2014.

He could face up to eight years in jail.

The online messages are mostly critical of the government's handling of an ethnic conflict in Kunming, Yunnan province last year, and sarcastic comments about two officials.

Shang, Pu's lawyer, said while Pu admitted his microblog writing style was "sharp, caustic and sometimes vulgar", "he said he didn't think he had incited ethnic hatred or provoked trouble. He had no such intention," Shang said.

Pu was not asked whether he admitted to his guilt during the trial.

Security was tight outside the courthouse and while there were many supporters, some of whom were pushed around forcefully by plainclothes police wearing black face masks while talking to foreign media.

Even foreign diplomats were roughly handled, including American diplomat Dan Biers who tried to read out a statement. It took a while before the situation calmed down before he could read it out in its entirety.

A supporter was forcefully pushed to the ground while filmed

He said the United States embassy called for Pu's release and urged "China to uphold fundamental civil rights and fair trial guarantees".

"Lawyers and civil society leaders such as Mr Pu should not be subject to continued repression but should be allowed to contribute to the building of a prosperous and stable society," Biers read out in his statement.

Some of Pu's supporters outside the courthouse chanted, "Pu Zhiqiang, not guilty!"

"He is a good lawyer who helped the underprivileged. He should never be convicted," said Zhang Jie, a petitioner from Jilin province.

Another from Henan province said: "How can he be charged just because of a few words he said?"

China law expert Eva Pils at King's College, London, said Pu's trial was "part of a crackdown on civil society [and] was clearly related to his free speech advocacy and role as a government critic".

"The authorities have made it clear that they see rights lawyers in particular as enemies of the state [and] that it treats the human rights movement as a subversive force it aims to annihilate," she said.

There are health concerns for Pu as he suffers from diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. Requests for bail have been rejected by the court.

China needs people like Pu to hold the government accountable, but the authorities clearly see him as a threat. We shall see what the verdict is, but it probably won't be what we are hoping for...

Passengers Behaving Badly -- Again

The emergency door exits were yanked open for some fresh air...

More and more Chinese mainlanders are traveling and it's a booming industry in the country even though there aren't enough pilots to fly them.

However these passengers are quickly gaining a bad rep for their manners on airplanes.

The latest?

Opening up the emergency door exits because the flight was delayed due to snow.

First there was a three-hour delay due to rain from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Kunming. Then passengers got angry when the ongoing flight to Beijing was delayed more than two hours, from 8.45pm to 11pm.

A previous incident where another person opened the door

Some passengers initially refused to re-board the plane, demanding compensation, but finally they were coxed onto the plane by 1.40am. However it took more than an hour to clear snow from the plane, so when the aircraft finally began taxing at 3.17am -- more than seven hours behind schedule, some passengers pulled open three emergency door exits, forcing the pilots to stop the plane and return to the gate.

A person on Weibo reported -- and then the post was later deleted -- that the pilot exchanged angry words with the passengers. The post said the air conditioning was turned off at 3am and some passengers complained it was hard to breathe, and asked to get off the plane for fresh air, but the air crew refused.

The Weibo post then reported that the pilot shouted: "Are you going to die soon? If not, just wait."

Then the plane began moving, catching some passengers off guard, causing them to fall over.

The incident has sparked debate in China, with some blaming the pilot for not handling the situation well, while others believe passengers should not be pulling open emergency doors.

There's another incident of an apparently illiterate farmer who was caught smoking in the washroom of the plane and was fined HK$2,000 and had to give up his travel documents.

How about some kind of explanation of why it's crucial to clear snow off a plane before it takes off?

Some women were caught in a brawl over a crying baby

Another well-known incident from last month was when four passengers made a scene, scalding the flight attendant with hot water from instant noodles and threatening to bomb the plane due to a row over seating arrangements.

Then there was the passenger flying from Hangzhou to Chengdu who yanked open the emergency door just before take off to "get some fresh air".

Oh and don't forget about a cat fight on a flight from Chongqing to Hong Kong about a bawling baby...

How is China going to teach its 1.3 billion people about airline etiquette and safety? It seems like the motherland assumes its children know how to behave on planes without even giving them instructions...

Or perhaps it's because the Chinese are tired of being treated badly by their superiors that now as passengers, they feel entitled to their idea of just treatment?

China, you've got a long way to go, baby

Exposing Vulnerability

Pictures from Weibo of the aftermath of the knife attack in Guangzhou

The knife attack at Guangzhou Railway Station yesterday that wounded at least six people is the third assault in two months in China.

It calls into question the amount of money spent on domestic security, which is believed to be much more than 209 billion yuan, far exceeding the military budget.

If so much money is being spent on security, why are these attacks happening?

For example in Guandong, police have been patrolling with guns since 1994, and since May 1 there have been more than 4,000 gun-toting police officers and 10,000 auxilary police officers patrolling Guangzhou streets.

There are also SWAT teams and plainclothes police patrolling popular destinations, and 397,000 security cameras installed in the busy southern Chinese city since May1.

One of the six injured being carried away

It is a good illustration of how China has the hardware but not the software.

Even with all the equipment and manpower, the country isn't secure because it has poor intelligence gathering and local government capabilities to deal with these kinds of crises.

The just released 2013 China National Security Studies annual report features articles by scholars from various institutions who warn of "grave" challenges.

"Terror attacks in China have become more active than in previous years in both the number and seriousness of the attacks. The anti-terrorism condition facing China is grave," the report said.

So far this year there was an apparent suicide bomb and knife attack in Urumqi that left two assailants and a bystander dead a week ago, and a knife attack in Kunming train station in March that killed 29 and injured dozens. And now the incident in Guangzhou.

The report claims the main issue is Uyghur separatists from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement are to blame, expanding its attack targets from Xinjiang to other areas.

But are all these violent incidents really attributed to Uyghurs?

The Chinese government is not being transparent about this and all state media must carry Xinhua stories on any sensitive incidents so we may not be entirely sure of their conclusions.

But in any case, the lack of intelligence proves that having hardware is not enough to stop impending attacks. You need to know what is going on on the ground.

The more the government represses people like the Uyghurs, the more isolated they become, and the more secretive they are. As not many Chinese know the Uyghur language and culture, how can they even begin to understand this ethnic minority and their motives, let alone get some inkling of attacks being planned?

The string of attacks clearly shows heavy-handed repression does not bring security, but vulnerability.

Is this what China really wants to expose?