Criminal Justice

An official from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) reported that 198 people involved in 97 cases have been sentenced in the XUAR for crimes committed in July 2009, a period when demonstrations and rioting took place in the region. The figure appears to far exceed the number of cases reported to date by Chinese media. XUAR government chairperson Nur Bekri reported the figure at a March 7 press conference during the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, according to March 7 reports in English and Chinese from Xinhua, and suggested more sentences are possible, as trials are ongoing.

On February 9, 2010, the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province sentenced writer and environmental activist Tan Zuoren to five years in prison, and the day before upheld the three-year sentence of fellow activist Huang Qi, according to a February 8 Chinese Human Rights Defenders article and a February 9 Associated Press article (via New York Times). Both had criticized the government for not doing enough to investigate the causes of school collapses in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake or to address the demands of grieving parents.

The Beijing High People's Court announced on February 11, 2010, its decision to uphold the 11-year sentence of prominent writer Liu Xiaobo for "inciting subversion of state power," according to a February 11 Human Rights in China (HRIC) report.

Courts in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) completed trials for 437 cases involving crimes of endangering state security (ESS) in 2009, representing a sharp increase in such cases from the previous year, based on information from XUAR media and as reported in a previous Congressional-Executive Commission on China analysis. Rozi Ismail, head of the XUAR High People's Court, provided the figure in his January 14 work report at the XUAR People's Congress and reported that 255 people had been sentenced to prison terms of 10 years or more for ESS crimes, according to a January 15 Chinese-language Xinhua article.

Following the forceful police suppression of a demonstration by Uyghurs on July 5 and outbreaks of violence starting that day in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court held trials on December 22 and 23 for 22 people accused of committing crimes in July, according to reports from Chinese and overseas media. The court found the defendants, who were involved in a total of five cases, guilty of crimes including intentional homicide and robbery, sentencing five to death, five to death with a two-year reprieve, eight to life in prison, and four to prison sentences between 12 and 15 years, according to a December 24 report from the Xinjiang Daily (via Bingtuan Net). Based on the names provided in the article, all of the people sentenced appear to be Uyghur.

Prominent intellectual Liu Xiaobo submitted an appeal of his 11-year sentence to the Beijing High People's Court on December 29, 2009, according to a January 4, 2010, New York Times (NYT) article. Article 196 of the PRC Criminal Procedure Law gives the high court until mid-February (one and a half months after accepting an appeal) to make its decision, although a ruling could come any time before then. Article 196 also allows the high court to extend its time to decide a case by an additional month, but only under special circumstances.

Freedom of Expression

On December 22, 2009, the Jiangsu Provincial High People's Court upheld the 10-year sentence against Guo Quan, formerly a university professor and past member of the state-approved China Democratic League, according to a copy of the court's judgment published by Boxun on January 4, 2010. In October, the Suqian Intermediate People's Court in Jiangsu handed down the sentence, which also included three years' deprivation of political rights, finding that Guo used the Internet to organize an "illegal" political party called the "China New Democracy Party," recruited members for the party, published numerous "reactionary" articles online, called for a seven-day stay-at-home boycott of the government, and sought to "overthrow" the socialist system.