{"id":182996,"date":"2015-04-17T14:00:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T21:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=182996"},"modified":"2015-12-15T15:00:17","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T23:00:17","slug":"the-case-against-gao-yu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2015\/04\/the-case-against-gao-yu\/","title":{"rendered":"The Case Against Gao Yu"},"content":{"rendered":"
71-year-old journalist Gao Yu was sentenced to seven years in prison<\/a> on Friday for leaking an internal memo on “seven perils” to Party rule to foreign media<\/a>. She maintains her innocence, and will appeal. The case against Gao reportedly hinged on her own confession<\/strong><\/a>, which was televised on state broadcaster CCTV<\/a> without her knowledge and which she says was made only after investigators threatened her son<\/a>. The broadcast was part of a recent pattern that has concerned lawyers and rights groups<\/a>. From The Guardian\u2019s Tania Branigan:<\/p>\n Gao Yu, 71, has denied leaking state secrets abroad, and her lawyer said that she would appeal against her seven-year sentence. He said the prosecution lacked evidence and had based its case on her confession, which she said was made under pressure because her son was also in custody at the time.<\/p>\n [\u2026 Lawyer Shang Baojun] said the court excluded testimony from the founder of the Mirror Media Group \u2013 which first published the text, known as Document No 9 \u2013 denying that Gao sent it to him.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think there isn\u2019t enough evidence to prove that Gao has leaked the document. There isn\u2019t physical evidence and there is no witness. Ho Pin, who the prosecutor alleged to have received the document from Gao, has given written testimony that Gao didn\u2019t send him the document.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mirror Media Group has reiterated publicly that Gao did not leak the text to it. Gao\u2019s statement of \u201cdeep remorse\u201d, which she said she agreed to because she feared retaliations against her son, was broadcast on television without her knowledge. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another lawyer, Mo Shaoping, pointed out to German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle that \u201caccording to Chinese law, evidence obtained under duress must be thrown out and must not be considered for passing a verdict<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Ho Pin claims, according to a tweet by Reuters\u2019 Sui-Lee Wee, that he actually received the document from a senior Party official<\/a>. A further issue is whether Document No. 9 is really a state secret or not<\/strong><\/a>. Shang addressed this in an interview translated by China Media Project:<\/p>\n Explaining the News: The crime she has been accused of is \u201cillegally providing state secrets beyond [China\u2019s] borders,\u201d but can you really regard the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s internal documents concerning ideology as \u201cstate secrets\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shang Baojun:<\/strong> This is something we\u2019ve debated before. Investigative organs determined through the Beijing Municipal Office for the Protection of State Secrets (\u5317\u4eac\u5e02\u4fdd\u5bc6\u5c40) that the document in question was a state document of a confidential nature (\u673a\u5bc6\u7ea7). Of course, we don\u2019t agree with this conclusion. And we\u2019ve appealed for a new determination higher up from the PRC\u2019s National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets, including on the question of whether [the document] can be construed as a \u201cstate secret\u201d \u2014 and then further what, if any, level of \u201cstate secret.\u201d China has three levels of secrecy: top secret (\u7edd\u5bc6\u7ea7), confidential (\u673a\u5bc6\u7ea7) and secret (\u79d8\u5bc6\u7ea7). If any of these are leaked, there are subject to different sentences.<\/p>\n Regardless of what the determination is, we do not believe that a document from the Chinese Communist Party providing guidance on propaganda and ideology, or direction on the main theme (\u4e3b\u65cb\u5f8b) can be construed as a \u201cstate secret.\u201d [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In yesterday\u2019s update from CDT<\/a>, former high-level aide Bao Tong agreed that Gao would have had the right and even duty to reveal the document, while Amnesty International\u2019s Nicholas Bequelin explained the \u201cover-broad and open ended\u201d definition of state secrets which makes them \u201cthe weapon of choice to silence critics, dissenters, journalists and party foe.\u201d<\/p>\n While the punishment is not as harsh as it might have been\u2014leaking state secrets overseas can carry anything up to a life sentence\u2014it is heavier in light of Gao\u2019s age<\/strong><\/a>. From Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal:<\/p>\n The sentencing of the journalist comes amid a sustained crackdown on criticism and independent political activity in which dozens of activists, lawyers, scholars and others have been detained or jailed, in some cases for unusually long periods. Besides Ms. Gao, authorities have prosecuted two other elderly dissidents: 74-year-old Yiu Man-tin, a publisher of political books who was sentenced to 10 years for smuggling, and 81-year-old Huang Zerong, a writer better known as Tie Liu who was fined and given a suspended 2\u00bd-year sentence for illegal business dealings.<\/p>\n [\u2026] In the past, it was rare for Chinese authorities to detain or jail elderly critics, who were traditionally given quiet warnings when they crossed political red lines.<\/p>\n [\u2026] \u201cSeven years is a long time for someone who\u2019s 71 years old,\u201d said Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, adding that dissidents have been hit with a progression of lengthier sentences in the past two years. \u201cThis basically surpasses any kind of crackdown we\u2019ve seen since the early 1990s,\u201d she said. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Other groups have also spoken out. Amnesty described the sentence as \u201can affront to justice and an attack on freedom of expression<\/a>\u201d; Human Rights in China said that it \u201conce again exposes the hollowness of the official slogan of ruling the country in accordance with the law<\/a>.\u201d The Hong Kong Journalists Association<\/a>, Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club Hong Kong<\/a>, International Federation of Journalists<\/a>, and Committee to Protect Journalists have all expressed concern or condemnation<\/a>, while The Guardian reported that U.S. and E.U. officials criticized the judgment outside the court. CPJ’s Bob Dietz presented Gao’s case as a cautionary tale for the International Olympics Committee<\/a><\/strong> as it considers Beijing’s application for the 2022 Winter Games<\/a>:<\/p>\n Gao Yu was right, I was wrong. Gao, who was handed a seven-year prison sentence in a Beijing court on Friday, and I met at a conference organized by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in Paris in April 2008, a few months before the Beijing Olympic Games were to get underway. CPJ had worked hard to publicize the mistake made by the International Olympics Committee in awarding China the Games in the first place.<\/p>\n [\u2026] But in private conversations I would admit to some degree of hope that China would loosen up after the Games ended and the visiting journalists had gone home. Though the government did follow through on some of its promises about Internet access and freedom for visiting journalists to report more freely, those permissions eventually melted away.<\/p>\n As happens at conferences like that, I met Gao in the restaurant of the hotel where we were all staying. I mentioned my feelings that China would benefit from hosting the Games, at least in terms of loosening some of the restrictions on media. She was quite frank when she told me I was deluding myself. China’s media policies were not going to change, and I was na\u00efve to think that they would, or even that they could as long as the Communist Party was adamant about maintaining sole control of state power. [Source<\/a><\/strong>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The director general of Deutsche Welle, to which Gao had been a contributor, said he was \u201cappalled\u201d by the sentence<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n [Peter] Limbourg announced that, in reaction to the harsh sentencing of Gao Yu, DW will suspend its negotiations with the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on proposed technical cooperation in the area of art and culture.<\/p>\n Limbourg said, however, that he is convinced that dialogue with China is the only viable way to communicate ones own position and convictions and to bring about change through engagement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not want to close all channels of communication. However, a necessary prerequisite for future co-productions will be a demonstrable improvement in the attitude of the Chinese government towards critical journalists, bloggers and people with different views,\u201d said Limbourg. He emphasized that DW will, \u201ccontinue not only to closely track the fate of Gao Yu. It will also continue to closely monitor others in China who, due to similar allegations, are being persecuted or imprisoned.\u201d [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n DW\u2019s Philipp Bilsky wrote that \u201cthe verdict is a clear signal to all those who are critical of the Chinese government,\u201d<\/strong><\/a> referring to the cases of detained rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang<\/a>, imprisoned Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti<\/a>, and the five feminist activists who were recently released but remain under the shadow of investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n For months Beijing repeatedly cracked down on critics. A recent example being the arrest of five feminists who had wanted to protest against sexual harassment on public transport. The protesters were released on bail, but their legal cases are still pending. That case seemed particularly absurd because the Communist Party likes to portray itself as a champion of women\u2019s rights. Obviously only one thing counts for the Chinese government: Stifling any form of dissent.<\/p>\n [\u2026] The verdict against Gao Yu fits into this pattern. The Chinese government clearly wants to quickly suppress everything that could be a challenge to President Xi Jinpin\u2019s \u201cChinese Dream.\u201d The ice in China has become very thin for those who have a critical point of view. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 71-year-old journalist Gao Yu was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday for leaking an internal memo on “seven perils” to Party rule to foreign media. She maintains her innocence, and will appeal. The case against Gao reportedly hinged on her own confession, which was televised on state broadcaster CCTV without her knowledge and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":962,"featured_media":182972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,34,10,14744,14745,14746,100,5,1051],"tags":[16838,7520,4902,478,15936,1023,3427,273,5601,17075,2028,16578],"class_list":["post-182996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-human-rights","category-law","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","category-society","category-top-article","tag-2022-olympics","tag-deutsche-welle","tag-forced-confessions","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-gao-yu","tag-journalism","tag-mo-shaoping","tag-press-freedom","tag-sentencing","tag-shang-baojun","tag-state-secrets","tag-televised-confessions","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n