China Condemns Activist to Eight Years in Prison ‘to Set an Example’

TIANJIN, CHINA (Conspiracy Talk News) – One activist was sentenced to eight years in prison, the other was exempt from punishment. Chinese justice wanted to give or set an “example” by condemning two dissidents on Tuesday for “subversion,” although one of them was released from prison after pleading guilty.

Mr. Wu Gan, who had refused to plead guilty, was sentenced to eight years in prison by a court in Tianjin city (north of the country) for attempted “subversion”, said his lawyer, Ge Yongxi, outside the palace of justice, to which the foreign press did not have access.

A further 1,500 kilometers south in Changsha, lawyer Xie Yang, whose case caught the attention of several Western countries, was also convicted of subversion, but was exempted from punishment after agreeing to plead guilty.

Wu Gan, arrested in May 2015 while working in a Beijing law firm, calls himself a “super vulgar butcher”, after defending the case of a woman who killed the man who raped her, an official of the Chinese Communist Party.

But for one of them the authorities wanted above, all to set an example.

“It is clear that he was severely sentenced because he refused to plead guilty. The authorities used numerous means of pressure “to try to convince him, explained Yan Xin.

“I think the court imposed eight years to make him an example so that other activists say that they are guilty when they are accused of crimes against the state,” he said.

It is the most severe sentence against dissidents in China since June 2016, when two members of the Chinese Democratic Party, Lu Gengsong and Chen Shuqing, were respectively sentenced to 11 and 10 and a half years in prison for the same reason.

It is also the harshest condemnation since President Xi asked to “defend the authority of the Chinese socialist party and system and categorically oppose any words or actions that undermine them”.

Wu Gan and Xie Yang were arrested in 2015 amid a wave of arrests of some 200 lawyers, lawyers and militants who handled sensitive cases. Most of them were released, but several were imprisoned. Wu Gan, 44, is now the one who has been most harshly condemned within this group of dissidents called “709.”

Xie Yang was instead dispensed from his sentence after his “repentance” and because his “crimes” did not cause “serious harm” to society, according to a video of the audience, broadcast on the Weibo social network.

After being held incommunicado for six months, Xie Yang, through his lawyers, accused the Chinese police of torturing him, this prompted criticism from several Western countries earlier this year.

In May, at his trial, described as a farce by human rights defense associations, Xie Yang pleaded guilty and withdrew his accusations. On Tuesday, in front of the court, he apologized for having induced the opinion to an error “on this issue of torture.”

His wife and two daughters left China at the beginning of the year to settle in the United States.

 

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