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China jails man for seeking repeat of Tiananmen protest : Amnesty
BEIJING Mon Mar 24, 2014 9:07am EDT
(Reuters) - China has jailed for 18 months a man who tried to stage a repeat of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protest, rights group Amnesty International said on Monday, in another sign of the ruling Communist Party's intolerance of dissent.
Public discussion of the Tiananmen crackdown, in which rights groups say hundreds were probably killed, is still taboo in China.
Gu Yimin applied last May for permission to demonstrate on June 4, the 24th anniversary of the bloody crackdown in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, but the government rejected his application and arrested him.
A court in Changshu, in the eastern province of Jiangsu, found Gu guilty of inciting state subversion, Amnesty said in an email. Inciting subversion is a charge commonly levelled against critics of one-party rule.
Gu had also forwarded several photographs commemorating the movement on his microblog, including one that said: "By the expiry date of 2013, remove the Chinese Communists; on June 4, the city was slaughtered".
In the statement, Anu Kultalahti, a China researcher for Amnesty, said: "Gu Yimin should be released immediately and unconditionally. Nearly 25 years on from the Tiananmen Square crackdown the authorities continue to stop at nothing to bury the truth of 1989."
"Rather than ratchet up such persecution the authorities should acknowledge what really happened and deliver justice for the victims."
Gu's charge of suspicion of inciting subversion of state power was the first time it had been used since President Xi Jinping took office in March of last year.
The Communist Party has banned references in state media, the Internet and books, to the Tiananmen crackdown, leaving most young Chinese ignorant of the events of June 3 and 4, 1989, when the country's leaders ordered troops to open fire on demonstrators and sent in tanks to crush a student-led movement.
Xi's ascendancy in a once-in-a-decade generational leadership transition had given many Chinese hope for political reform, mainly due to his folksy style and the legacy of his father, Xi Zhongxun, a former reformist vice-premier.
But since he assumed office the party has detained or jailed dozens of dissidents, including anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong and ethnic Uighur professor Ilham Tohti.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Hundreds of protesters were killed in 1989 when the People's Liberation Army cracked down on the student democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo: AP
A Jiangsu court has sentenced a man to 18 months in jail for applying to hold a protest on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, his lawyer said.
Gu Yimin was found guilty of "inciting state subversion" for posting pictures of the 1989 crackdown online and applying for permission to stage a protest on its anniversary last year, his lawyer Liu Weiguo said.
Gu Yumin
"This judgment violates the constitution," Liu said, adding that Gu, 36, would appeal against the verdict handed down by a court in Changshu . "We maintain that Gu Yimin was exercising his right to freedom of speech."
Liu said that men he believed to be state security officers had attacked him and another lawyer outside the courthouse.
Hundreds of protesters - by some estimates, thousands - were killed in 1989 when the People's Liberation Army cracked down on the student democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the symbolic heart of the state.
The governing Communist Party tightly censors public discussion of the crackdown.
Gu applied to the local authorities to hold a small-scale protest on June 4 last year, the 24th anniversary of the event, his wife Xu Yan had said previously.
He stood trial in September and denied the charges, Liu said, adding that Gu had called off his protest when the authorities warned him not to go ahead.
"There is nothing illegal about posting a photograph of a genuine incident," Liu said. "If his activities caused damage to the party, that's not the same as damaging the state."
Charges of incitement to state subversion have previously been used to imprison political dissidents.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in jail for the crime in 2009 after circulating a petition calling for political reforms including democratic elections.
Gu's punishment was much stiffer than the 15 days of administrative detention that activist Li Weiguo served last year for filing a similar request to hold a June 4 vigil in Guangzhou.
A Haizhou district court in January dismissed his request to have his punishment overturned.
Li, who took part in local pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989, is a Hong Kong resident.
