Court Sentences Xu Wanping to 12 Years Imprisonment for Inciting Subversion

January 30, 2006

The Chongqing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Xu Wanping to 12 years imprisonment and 4 years deprivation of political rights for incitement to subvert state power on December 23, according to a December 24 Human Rights in China (HRIC) press release. Chinese authorities have not disclosed for what actions they prosecuted Xu. In addition, they have taken several measures to ensure the public does not learn about the facts relating to his case:

The Chongqing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court sentenced Xu Wanping to 12 years imprisonment and 4 years deprivation of political rights for incitement to subvert state power on December 23, according to a December 24 Human Rights in China (HRIC) press release. Chinese authorities have not disclosed for what actions they prosecuted Xu. In addition, they have taken several measures to ensure the public does not learn about the facts relating to his case:

  • Authorities denied Xu access to his family during his detention, according to an October 20 HRIC report.
  • HRIC's October 20 report also said that Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who has represented political activists including Zheng Yichun, Guo Feixiong, and the wife of jailed house church pastor Cai Zhuohua, attempted to register as Xu's legal counsel on June 2, but authorities refused to grant him access to Xu on the grounds that his case involved state secrets (in November authorities in Beijing shut down Gao's law firm).
  • The court refused to open Xu's trial to the public or allow his family members to attend, again citing state secrets, according to a November Voice of America report (in Chinese). In addition, the procuratorate and the court have refused to provide a copy of the indictment to Xu's family, according to a December 28 Epoch Times report.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention identified Chinese authorities' use of "state secrets" exceptions as an area of concern in the report on its September 2004 mission to China, noting that they improperly interfere with access to defense counsel.

As a result of the government's actions, the only information available regarding the nature of the acts underlying Xu's conviction is that the head of the Chongqing public security bureau and at least 10 other public security officials took Xu into custody from his home in Chongqing on April 30, 2005, after interrogating him regarding his participation in a signature campaign related to anti-Japanese protests earlier that month, according to a May 2 HRIC press release.

In March and April, Xu was listed as a signatory on several open letters, including a letter saying he would not obey the new Regulations on Letters and Visits which became effective on May 1, the Independent Chinese PEN Center Statement about the Case of Professor, Poet, and Critic Zheng Yichun and A Call for the International Community to Urge China to End Its Literary Inquisition and Release Zhang Lin and Zheng Yichun. On April 17 Xu announced that he was withdrawing his membership in the Communist Youth League, according to a May 24 report on the Epoch Times Web site.

According to HRIC, Xu served eight years in prison in connection with his participation in the 1989 democracy movement, and in 1998 he was sentenced to three years of reeducation through labor for disturbing social order in connection with his attempts to establish the China Democracy Party. In 2002, Xu was one of several activists (including Zhao Changqing, Jiang Lijun, Ouyang Yi, Han Lifa, Dai Xuezhong, Sang Jianchen, He Depu, and He Guanchang) that Chinese authorities detained in the run up to the 16th Communist Party Congress in November of that year (for additional information on this crackdown, see the CECC 2003 Annual Report Section III(a) - Rights of Criminal Suspects and Defendants).