China sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer to jail for more than four years for subverting state power, a verdict termed by rights groups as a gross injustice and mockery of the rule of law.<\/p>\n
Wang Quanzhang was jailed by a court in Tianjin, a city near Beijing, four years after he was picked up in a crackdown against lawyers and human rights activists. Wang, 42, had taken up several sensitive cases as a lawyer, including those slapped by the government against political activists, alleged victims of land seizures and followers of the banned Falun Gong movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s verdict is a gross injustice. It\u2019s outrageous that Wang Quanzhang is being punished for peacefully standing up for human rights in China. He must be immediately and unconditionally released,\u201d Doriane Lau, China Researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Wang\u2019s case was heard at the Tianjin court on December 26, prompting the United Nations to call on authorities to \u201censure his due process rights are respected\u201d and raising \u201cserious human rights concerns\u201d about the way his case had been handled. The court announced the verdict in an online statement in Chinese, which said that Wang was \u201cfound guilty of subverting state power, sentenced to four years and six months in prison, and deprived of political rights for five years\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the three years leading up to his sham of a trial, the authorities disappeared Wang Quanzhang into a black hole, where he was likely tortured. Wang\u2019s family, who continue to be harassed by the authorities, didn\u2019t even know if he was alive until recently. His continued imprisonment only prolongs their suffering,\u201d Lu added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China sentenced a prominent human rights lawyer to jail for more than four years for subverting state power, a verdict termed by rights groups as a gross injustice and mockery of the rule of law. Wang Quanzhang was jailed by a court in Tianjin, a city near Beijing, four years after he was picked up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53775,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53773\/revisions\/53775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}