One of China’s most celebrated human rights lawyers was handed a suspended three-year prison term on Tuesday, his lawyer said, in the latest clampdown on critics of the ruling Communist Party.
Police and plainclothes security officials were out in force to try to prevent journalists and supporters from getting to the court where Pu Zhiqiang was sentenced for “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
The verdict is the latest in a widening crackdown on civil society under President Xi Jinping, with more than 200 lawyers and activists detained or called in for questioning since the summer.
Pu, who has represented labour camp victims and dissident artist Ai Weiwei, was arrested a year-and-a-half ago over posts on social media between 2011 and 2014.
His secretive trial at Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court concluded Tuesday with a widely-anticipated guilty verdict, but with a sentence suspended for three years.
The ruling means Pu may be sent to jail if he repeats his criticism or runs afoul of police-imposed rules.
“Pu will not have to immediately go to prison, but he is still not a free man,” Mo Shaoping, Pu’s lawyer told AFP after the sentencing.
“We are not satisfied with the verdict because we maintain Pu is innocent.”
There were angry scenes around the courthouse, where police had set up a 200-metre (650-foot) cordon to prevent activists and reporters getting to the building.
– ‘There are foreign journalists here’ –
“Pu Zhiqiang is a good man! So speaking for the common people is a crime?” yelled one tearful woman as she was roughly shoved into a police van by a uniformed officers and people in civilian dress that assist them at events like this in China.
“Stop putting on a play, stop acting, there are foreign journalists here,” the officer told her.
Another woman stood alone at the centre of a ring of dozens of officers and plainclothes men and shouted “I just won’t go! Pu Zhiqiang is innocent!” before being forcibly escorted away.
The verdict means for the next three years, Pu will be subject to monitoring by the police and needs permission to leave Beijing.
If he breaks the law or any conditions of his release, he will be sent to prison.
At the end of three years, if the police feel he has not violated any of those conditions, his sentence will be commuted, according to the statute under which he was sentenced.
Jiang Jiawen, who came from the northern city of Dandong to support Pu and had been present at his trial a week earlier, expressed concern over the tight security presence.
“I’m here this morning to support Pu Zhiqiang but I don’t know if I’ll be able to return home tonight,” he said.
“But that’s alright — if there’s no justice, I’ll sit in jail with Pu Zhiqiang.”
The state-run Xinhua news agency called the sentence a “light punishment”.
It said Pu had “stirred ethnic hatred among Internet users, triggering an antagonistic mentality in many and creating a severe social impact.”
But rights groups were swift to condemn the verdict.
“Clearly it is positive that Pu Zhiqiang is unlikely to spend another night in jail, yet that cannot hide the gross injustice against him,” said William Nee, China Researcher at Amnesty International, in a statement.
“He is no criminal and this guilty verdict effectively shackles one of China’s bravest champions of human rights from practising law.”