Leading Dissident Sentenced Showing China’s Iron Fist on Reform

Liu Xiaobo, 53, a former literature professor and a persistent critic of China’s single party system, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion last Friday. Mr. Lui was detained in December 2008 after playing a major role in drafting the petition Charter 08 which demanded the right to free speech, open elections and the rule of law.

On the 11-page verdict that was read out Friday morning in Beijing it stated that alongside with the prison sentence, Mr. Liu will be deprived of his political rights for an additional two years thus inhibiting the former Beijing Normal University professor from writing and speaking out on an array of issues.

The longest sentence in China for dissent in over a decade, many have spoken out on the hypocritical and anti-human rights actions of the Chinese Government. Gregory May, first secretary of the U.S. Embassy, stood courthouse on Friday morning demanding for the immediate release of Mr. Liu.

Mr. May said, “Persecution of individuals for the peaceful expression of political views is inconsistent with internationally recognized norms of human rights.”

Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, called the trial of Mr. Liu “a travesty of justice” and described Mr. Lui as “a sacrificial lamb” in which China indicted in order to intimidate it critics.

Mr. Bequelin and others have pointed out that Mr. Liu’s prosecution for his criticisms is part of an overall political hardening of the Chinese government which began before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“It shows that the leadership is increasingly conservative and restrictive of basic freedoms,” Mr. Bequelin said, “and it also sends a strong message to the rest of the world that China is not really serious when it talks about human rights.”

Mr. Liu who had been held in secret for more than a year was only given two weeks with his lawyer to prepare for his defense. His trial only lasted two hours before the court made its final decision and his wife and more than two dozen diplomats from the United States, Canada and European Union were barred from the courtroom.

The pressures of protest of Mr. Liu’s prosecution did not just come from supporters and foreign diplomats within China but from international voices as well. During his trip to China last month, President Obama spoke about Mr. Liu’s case with President Hu Jintao. Furthermore various leader of the European Union had also urged for the immediate release of the former professor.

In response to the rebuke of various nations, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman of China dismissed the foreign criticism of Mr. Liu’s trial process. calling them a “gross interference of China’s internal affairs.”

China’s sentence of Mr. Liu sent a strong message to advocates of political reform and free speech and also displayed the nation’s growing confidence of their independence on the world stage. Many experts on Chinese Politics have said that China’s dismissal foreign criticism was an undeniable signal that China will not yield to international pressures.

Though Mr. Liu’s indictment may have come as a shock to the various observers of China, the actions taken by the Chinese government during the trial process seems to be consistent with the overall the path the Chinese government has taken in the few years. In 2003, under the leadership of President Hu Jintao, China went through a period of modest legal reform but since then the government has brought about a tightening of Internet restrictions, the repression of rights lawyers and the persecution of intellectuals who have spoken out about the need for greater transparency and an end to single-party rule.

Edward Friedman, a specialist on Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, pointed out that many people in the West had been holding onto the misconceived view that China’s economic development would help smoothly and quickly transition in political liberalization. But this is not case as “it’s clear that what matters most to the Chinese Communist Party is the survival of the regime and their monopoly on power.”

Human right advocates have partially put the blame of China’s intolerance to domestic dissent on Western political leaders contending that since the expansion of China’s economic power, United States and Europe have been less persistent in their calls for human rights. They were especially critical of what Hillary Clinton calls the “principled pragmatism” approach the Obama administration has been using in their attempt to promote freedom without the public hectoring favored by the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The Obama administration’s principled pragmatism approach have resulted in less emphasis on human rights during Mrs. Clinton’s visit to Beijing last February as her meetings with government officials focused more on gaining China’s cooperation in dealing with Iran and North Korea. Also, it has encouraged actions such as President’s Obama’s decision to call off a meeting with the Dalai Lama shortly before his trip to Beijing in order to avoid offending China.

Human right advocates argue that though Obama’s quiet diplomacy has proved to be useful at times, without any real pressure from major international powers such the United States, China will never have an incentive to abide by human rights.

Even though Mr. Liu’s prosecution has stirred up a lot of criticism from the local community in Beijing and within the international community, Chinese authorities have made it their priority to make sure the trial and its critics stayed out of the state-run news outlets. The government have censored a lot of information about Mr. Liu and Charter 08 from the internet. The most extensive piece information about Mr. Liu’s case was printed on the English-language edition of Xinhua, the official news agency, as a brief news item. The article stated that the court “had strictly followed the legal procedures in this case and fully protected Liu’s litigation rights,” but made no mention of the verdict and instead declared 2009 as the “years of citizens’ rights.”

sources: here and here.