Criminal Justice

House church pastor Wang Zaiqing completed his two-year prison sentence for "illegal operation of a business" on April 27 and is presumed to have since been released from prison, according to information from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Political Prisoner Database. Authorities in Huainan city, Anhui province, initially detained Wang on April 28, 2006, after he printed and distributed Bibles and other religious materials without government authorization. On October 9, 2006, the Tianjia'an District People's Court levied the two-year prison sentence on Wang and fined him 100,000 yuan (then approximately US$12,500).

Yang Chunlin, the land rights activist who organized a petition titled "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics," was sentenced to five years in prison on March 24 by the Jiamusi City Intermediate People's Court in Heilongjiang province for "inciting subversion of state power," according to March 24 articles by the Associated Press (AP) and Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD). The court also sentenced Yang to two years deprivation of political rights, according to CHRD.

The Beijing Number 1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced activist Hu Jia on April 3 to three and a half years' imprisonment and one year deprivation of political rights for "inciting subversion of state power," according to an April 3 Xinhua article (no longer available via Xinhua, but reprinted via Boxun; shorter English version available via China Daily).

The Beijing Number 1 Intermediate People's Court tried activist Hu Jia on charges of "inciting subversion of state power" on March 18 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to a March 18 Radio Free Asia (RFA) article. Hu, who has advocated on behalf of HIV/AIDS patients, environmental issues, and rights defenders such as Chen Guangcheng, pleaded not guilty, according to a March 18 Reuters article.

Authorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) released house church leader and bookstore manager Zhou Heng from detention on February 19 after holding him for over six months for alleged involvement in plans to receive and distribute religious literature. According to a February 21 China Aid Association (CAA) article, authorities dropped the charges against him. As noted in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China Political Prisoner Database, Zhou was initially detained on August 3, 2007, while picking up a shipment of books reported to be Bibles donated by overseas churches for free distribution in China.

Editor Korash Huseyin completed his three-year prison sentence for "dereliction of duty" on February 2 and is presumed to have since been released from prison, according to information from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Political Prisoner Database. Radio Free Asia's Uighur service, which reported on the sentence's expiration in a February 1 article, reported that Chinese authorities have not provided confirmation of the release. Huseyin had served as chief editor of the Kashgar Literature Journal, based in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), which published a short story in 2004 deemed to promote separatism.

Beijing public security officials formally arrested activist Hu Jia on charges of "inciting subversion of state power," according to a February 1 Radio Free Asia (RFA) article and a January 31 report in the Dui Hua Foundation's Human Rights Journal. Beijing public security officials detained Hu on December 27, 2007. On January 30, officials served Hu's family with an arrest notice and officials allowed Hu's father to visit him on January 31, according to the Dui Hua report and a February 3 RFA article.

According to information available in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's (CECC) Political Prisoner Database (PPD) since January 30, 2008, the number of known political detentions of Tibetans in 2007 (24) is greater than the number of such known detentions in 2006 (13) and 2004 (15), is currently the same as the number in 2005, and may surpass the number of known political detentions in 2003 (33) and 2002 (36) as additional information about detentions in 2007 emerges from China.