Former China Security Head Spied on Leaders, Probe Said to Find
April 20, 2015
Zhou Yongkang, then China’s top security official, attends a plenary session on the draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law as China’s National People’s Congress takes place in Beijing, China, on March 8, 2012. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg
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Bloomberg
China’s investigation of former security chief Zhou Yongkang found evidence that he ordered unauthorized spying on top leaders including President Xi Jinping, according to two people familiar with the probe.
The investigation showed that Zhou used phone taps and other methods to gather information on the family assets, private lives and political stances of China’s leaders, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential.
Xi’s sweeping anti-graft effort has helped him solidify his grip on power since he became Communist Party chief in late 2012, making him the strongest leader since Deng Xiaoping. He’s frequently warned the campaign is necessary to preserve the legitimacy of the Communist Party. Zhou, who retired from the Politburo Standing Committee — the top leadership group in the party — in 2012, is the highest-ranking individual accused of the more than 100,000 officials caught so far.
Prosecutors and the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection didn’t respond to faxed requests for comment about the case. Zhou was arrested and expelled from the party in December and can’t be reached for comment. No defense lawyer has been announced.
Closed Trials
Supreme Court President Zhou Qiang was reported last month by Xinhua as saying that Zhou’s trial will be open “in accordance with the law,” suggesting that areas unrelated to state secrets may be made public. No date has been announced for the trial, which the nation’s top prosecution agency said on its website will be held in the northern port city of Tianjin.The investigation into Zhou found that Liang Ke, the former director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of State Security, helped him gather information on party leaders, one of the people with knowledge of the probe said.
Former deputy police chief Li Dongsheng released some of the information to overseas Chinese language websites, the person said, without specifying the websites. Li, who has been charged with bribery, and Liang, who has been removed from office but not officially announced as under investigation, couldn’t be reached for comment.
Bo Links
State media including Xinhua have linked Zhou to former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, who was seen as a rising star in the party until he was arrested and tried for abuse of power and bribery. Zhou and Bo “engaged in political activities” that “sabotaged party unity,” according to a Supreme People’s Court report in March.Bo, sentenced to life in prison in 2013, testified he received orders from a law and order committee then headed by Zhou in early 2012 on how to cover up the defection of a police chief, a person present during his trial said, asking not to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.
Zhou warned Bo in 2012 he was about to be removed from his post, Reuters reported April 15, citing people it did not identify.
Zhou “severely harmed the Party and the people and led a number of officials astray,” the party said in January. His stain “must be washed clean.” He faces a possible death penalty or life in jail if convicted.
Gang of Four
Two other former top officials, former president Hu Jintao’s one-time chief of staff Ling Jihua and Xu Caihou, once vice-chairman of the military’s top decision making body, have also been targeted in Xi’s anti-graft drive. Xu died last month and Ling, who has been removed from his posts and is under investigation, couldn’t be reached for comment.Together with Zhou and Bo, the “so-called new Gang of Four” posed a potential challenge to Xi’s leadership of the party, according to Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian who previously worked at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The official People’s Daily newspaper said in a commentary on Monday that the cases of Zhou and Ling showed a pattern of family-based corruption that led to “power-money exchanges”.
Xi’s efforts have nabbed both “tigers” — or senior officials — and “flies.” Unlike predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang, Xi assumed the roles of party general secretary, China’s president and head of the military within four months. He also established and chairs a new national security council.
State media outlets this year have warned that factions within the party will not be tolerated, and Xi has urged officials to “‘strictly keep the party’s secrets.”
The corruption charges against Zhou cover almost his entire political career from 1988 to 2012, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said. His intentional disclosure of state secrets “was particularly serious,” according to his indictment.
China Law Scholar Said to Be Chosen to Defend Zhou Yongkang China Charges Ex-Security Chief With Revealing State Secrets China Probe of Zhou for Leaks May Mean Closed-Door Trial
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Are China’s Trials About Corruption or Suppression of the Truth? Security chief who spied on Xi Jinping could face execution
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China: Jailing of Journalist Gao Yu ‘Part of Push to Silence Critics of Xi, Communist Party’ — ‘Legal finding’ based on coercion and unfounded allegations
April 18, 2015Lawyers for defendant condemn guilty verdict in state secrets case, saying decision based on coercion and unfounded allegations
By Verna Yu
South China Morning Post
Chinese journalist and critic Gao Yu pictured in Hong Kong in 2012. Photo: Reuters
The seven-year jail sentence handed down on Friday to Gao Yu, a 71-year-old mainland journalist known for her hard-hitting reports on elite politics, was widely condemned as another move to muzzle dissent in the ongoing crackdown on government critics.
The United States yesterday also said her jailing was “part of a disturbing pattern” of actions against those who question Beijing’s policies, and urged China to free Gao.
The Beijing No 3 Intermediate Court said Gao “illegally provided overseas personnel with state secrets” and convicted her on the charge of leaking state secrets abroad, according to the court’s microblog. She would also be stripped of her political rights for a year after her release, it said.
People familiar with Gao speculate that the authorities have long held a grudge against her for her political writings and wanted to punish her.
Her lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said the verdict was “wrong” because the court failed to take into consideration that Gao’s confession on state television last May was coerced because of threats made against her son. He was initially detained along with her but was later released.
She has been muzzled. When she is out she will be nearly 80. What can she do?
Mo also said that even though the prosecution produced no evidence to support its allegations that Gao used Skype software to send an internal Communist Party memo called Document No 9 to the US-based news website Mingjing in July, 2013, the court still accepted this as truth. Mingjing said on its website on Friday that the allegation was untrue; it obtained the document in June, long after it had been circulated online.The verdict also said Gao obtained a photocopy of Document No 9 from Yao Jianfu, a retired party official and policy researcher, in June 2013 and alleged that while she knew it was state secret, she still sent an electronic version to Mingjing founder Ho Pin.
It said that although Gao denied this during the trial, the court was not convinced.
News reports said Yao had been detained but released on bail in June last year.
He could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post from New York, Ho denied that he obtained Document No 9 from Gao, saying his publication was given the circular by someone from the party’s propaganda authorities in order to contest other incorrect versions circulated online. He said his publication, which has broken many exclusive reports on senior leaders, had many connections among officials and did not need to obtain a report like Document No 9 from a journalist.
Document No 9 ordered cadres to tackle seven subversive influences on society, including “Western constitutional democracy” and “universal values” such as human rights and free speech. Mo argued that the document, which gives ideological guidance to cadres, could not be seen as a “state secret”.
Another lawyer for Gao, Shang Baojun, said the verdict was disappointing and unjust.
Gao’s brother, Gao Wei, said that as his sister was led away yesterday she smiled and said: “I’ll be fine. I will appeal.”
He said he hardly recognised her because she had become so thin and her hair much greyer.
Gao Wei said that by giving Gao such a long sentence, the authorities had effectively silenced her. He was also worried that Gao, who has high blood pressure and heart disease, would not live out her jail term.
“She has been muzzled. When she is out she will be nearly 80. What can she do?” he said. “I doubt she can hold up until then.”
Gao has been detained since April 24, last year and pleaded innocent at her trial in Beijing in November.
“We call on the Chinese authorities to release Ms Gao immediately and respect China’s international human rights commitments,” a US State Department official said.
“The conviction of veteran reporter Gao Yu is part of a disturbing pattern of government action against public interest lawyers, internet activists, journalists, religious leaders and others who peacefully question official Chinese policies and actions,” he added. Gao was named one of the International Press Institute’s 50 “world press heroes” in 2000.
Before Friday’s sentence was handed down, Gao had already spent a total of seven years in jail. She was locked up for 15 months on the eve of the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, and was jailed again in 1993 for six years for leaking state secrets in her writing on politics.
In an interview before she was arrested last year, Gao said her experiences only spurred her to probe more deeply into her country’s affairs.
“You can change mountains and rivers but not a person’s nature – seven years in jail did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for news,” she said.
In her 2009 book, My June 4th, published 20 years after the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, she wrote that following the “massacre”, the Communist regime wanted people “to abandon their souls to become stones in a high wall”.
“But there are still countless souls hidden inside the thin and fragile [egg] shells that are independent and irreplaceable, and they are breaking against that firm, high wall,” Gao wrote. “Twenty years on, I am still like some of those eggs, continuously breaking against that high wall.”
Amnesty International researcher William Nee condemned Gao’s jailing as “blatant political persecution” and said Gao was “the victim of vaguely worded and arbitrary state-secret laws used against activists as part of the authorities’ attack on freedom of expression”.
Maya Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said Gao’s heavy sentence “reflects the worsening crackdown on civil society since President Xi Jinping came to power”.
Veteran journalist Ching Cheong, who spent nearly three years in jail on the mainland, said Gao’s sentence reinforced the message that the authorities were firmly in charge and “people have to toe the party line closely”.
The United States urged China to free Gao, saying her jailing was “part of a disturbing pattern” of actions against those who question Beijing’s policies, Agence France-Presse reported.
With additional reporting from Agence France-Presse
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Jailing of Chinese journalist Gao Yu part of push to silence critic
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China Sentences 71-Year-Old Journalist to 7 Years — Beijing Tired of Elders in Dissent
April 17, 2015
A 2009 file photo shows Chinese journalist Gao Yu attending a debate in Prague. EPA/FILIP SINGER Photo:European Pressphoto Agency
Third sentencing of elderly critic illustrates eroding tolerance for dissent
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By Josh Chin
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
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BEIJING—A 71-year-old Chinese journalist on Friday became the third elderly critic of the Communist Party to be sentenced in court in less than a year, another sign of how Beijing’s tolerance for dissent has eroded under Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The journalist, Gao Yu, was sentenced to seven years in prison by Beijing’s Third Intermediate People’s Court after being found guilty in a closed trial of leaking state secrets to foreign media, according to a statement posted on the court’s verified social media feed Friday morning.
Ms. Gao was accused by the court of leaking an internal Communist Party directive to an overseas Chinese news site in 2013, according to her lawyer, Mo Shaoping. Known as Document No. 9, it identified ideological trends that the party should target.
Ms. Gao had admitted to the crime and apologized in a confession aired on state television in May, but she later retracted her confession, saying it had been made under duress after police detained her son. Despite that retraction, Mr. Mo said, the confession made up the bulk of prosecutors’ case against his client.
“It’s absurd,” the lawyer said. “We don’t accept the court’s verdict.”
Neither the court nor the Beijing People’s Procuratorate, the agency in charge of prosecuting Ms. Gao, had provided responses to requests for comment by Friday afternoon.
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 2½-year sentence for illegal business dealings.
Supporters of Messrs. Yiu and Huang say they believe both were tried on trumped-up charges because of their publishing activities. Mr. Yiu, who suffers from asthma and heart problems according to family members, was preparing to publish a book critical of Mr. Xi when he was arrested. Mr. Huang published a free magazine that contained essays criticizing one of China’s senior leaders.
Mr. Yiu isn’t reachable for comment and Mr. Huang has declined to discuss his case.
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.
Ms. Gao’s sentence “shows that regardless of age and regardless of health conditions, the government is determined to crack down on freedom of expression,” said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International. Ms. Gao suffers from high blood pressure and heart disease, according to human-rights groups.
Document No. 9, the internal false ideological trends memo that Ms. Gao is accused of leaking, identified a range of “false ideological trends” that it said posed a threat to the party, including constitutional government, an independent judiciary and freedom of the press. Many of those detained or arrested in the crackdown were advocates for such ideas, making the document “somewhat of a blueprint” for what kind of dissent to target, according to Mr. Nee.
Mr. Mo, the lawyer, said prosecutors accused Ms. Gao of providing a copy of the document to Mingjing, an overseas Chinese website, in July 2013. Ms. Gao had a copy of the document on her computer, and admitted to the court that she received the copy from a retired official, according to the lawyer. But the journalist denied knowing it constituted a state secret, and further denied providing it to the foreign website.
China’s murky laws on state secrets cover a range of sectors, including political parties’ internal documents.
Mr. Mo said the editor of Mingjing provided Ms. Gao’s legal team with a statement denying he had received the document from her, but said the court ignored. “He said he’d never received any document from Gao Yu ever,” the lawyer said.
In 1994, Ms. Gao, a participant in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was also found guilty of leaking state secrets to foreigners; she spent six years in prison before being released on medical grounds.
“Seven years is a long time for someone who’s 71 years old,” 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. “This basically surpasses any kind of crackdown we’ve seen since the early 1990s,” she said.
China’s government brushed off the criticism. “China’s judicial authorities handled the case in accordance with the law. It is within China’s sovereignty,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular press briefing Friday afternoon.
—Te-Ping Chen contributed to this article.
Write to Josh Chin at josh.chin@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Chinese dissident journalist Gao Yu, who was sentenced to seven years in jail on Friday, was also found guilty of leaking state secrets in 1994 after being arrested in 1993. A previous version of this article said her earlier conviction was in 1993.
Related:
Veteran Chinese Journalist Gao Yu Sentenced to 7 Years — Amnesty International said Goa a Victim of Corruption in Communist Party — “She Embarrassed Xi Regime”
The journalist, Gao Yu, was sentenced to seven years in prison by Beijing’s Third Intermediate People’s Court after being found guilty in a closed trial of leaking state secrets to foreign media, according to a statement posted on the court’s verified social media feed Friday morning.
Ms. Gao was accused by the court of leaking an internal Communist Party directive to an overseas Chinese news site in 2013, according to her lawyer, Mo Shaoping. Known as Document No. 9, it identified ideological trends that the party should target.
Ms. Gao had admitted to the crime and apologized in a confession aired on state television in May, but she later retracted her confession, saying it had been made under duress after police detained her son. Despite that retraction, Mr. Mo said, the confession made up the bulk of prosecutors’ case against his client.
“It’s absurd,” the lawyer said. “We don’t accept the court’s verdict.”
Neither the court nor the Beijing People’s Procuratorate, the agency in charge of prosecuting Ms. Gao, had provided responses to requests for comment by Friday afternoon.
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 2½-year sentence for illegal business dealings.
Supporters of Messrs. Yiu and Huang say they believe both were tried on trumped-up charges because of their publishing activities. Mr. Yiu, who suffers from asthma and heart problems according to family members, was preparing to publish a book critical of Mr. Xi when he was arrested. Mr. Huang published a free magazine that contained essays criticizing one of China’s senior leaders.
Mr. Yiu isn’t reachable for comment and Mr. Huang has declined to discuss his case.
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.
Ms. Gao’s sentence “shows that regardless of age and regardless of health conditions, the government is determined to crack down on freedom of expression,” said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International. Ms. Gao suffers from high blood pressure and heart disease, according to human-rights groups.
Document No. 9, the internal false ideological trends memo that Ms. Gao is accused of leaking, identified a range of “false ideological trends” that it said posed a threat to the party, including constitutional government, an independent judiciary and freedom of the press. Many of those detained or arrested in the crackdown were advocates for such ideas, making the document “somewhat of a blueprint” for what kind of dissent to target, according to Mr. Nee.
Mr. Mo, the lawyer, said prosecutors accused Ms. Gao of providing a copy of the document to Mingjing, an overseas Chinese website, in July 2013. Ms. Gao had a copy of the document on her computer, and admitted to the court that she received the copy from a retired official, according to the lawyer. But the journalist denied knowing it constituted a state secret, and further denied providing it to the foreign website.
China’s murky laws on state secrets cover a range of sectors, including political parties’ internal documents.
Mr. Mo said the editor of Mingjing provided Ms. Gao’s legal team with a statement denying he had received the document from her, but said the court ignored. “He said he’d never received any document from Gao Yu ever,” the lawyer said.
In 1994, Ms. Gao, a participant in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was also found guilty of leaking state secrets to foreigners; she spent six years in prison before being released on medical grounds.
“Seven years is a long time for someone who’s 71 years old,” 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. “This basically surpasses any kind of crackdown we’ve seen since the early 1990s,” she said.
China’s government brushed off the criticism. “China’s judicial authorities handled the case in accordance with the law. It is within China’s sovereignty,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular press briefing Friday afternoon.
—Te-Ping Chen contributed to this article.
Write to Josh Chin at josh.chin@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
Chinese dissident journalist Gao Yu, who was sentenced to seven years in jail on Friday, was also found guilty of leaking state secrets in 1994 after being arrested in 1993. A previous version of this article said her earlier conviction was in 1993.
Related:
Veteran Chinese Journalist Gao Yu Sentenced to 7 Years — Amnesty International said Goa a Victim of Corruption in Communist Party — “She Embarrassed Xi Regime”
China puts 82-year-old writer on trial amid Xi Jinping’s sustained offensive against critics of the Communist Party
February 24, 2015
Activists say the Chinese writer is the oldest person to be targeted by Xi Jinping’s offensive against Communist Party opponents
Huang Zerong, a Beijing-based writer better known by his pen name Tie Liu
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By Tom Phillips, Beijing
The Daily Telegraph
An 82-year-old writer is expected to stand trial in southwest China on Wednesday afternoon as Xi Jinping’s sustained offensive against critics of the Communist Party enters a third year and shows no sign of abating.
Huang Zerong, a Beijing-based writer better known by his pen name Tie Liu, is due to appear at the Qingyang District Court in the city of Chengdu, more than 1,100 miles from the Chinese capital.
The elderly writer, who was taken from his home early one morning in mid-September, stands accused of “running an illegal business”, according to Liu Xiaoyuan, a well-known human rights lawyer who is close to Mr Tie.
The writer’s trial was being held so far from Beijing in order to minimise negative media coverage, claimed Mr Liu, who has also represented dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
Supporters and activists claim the trial is politically motivated and part of a wide-ranging Communist Party attack on those who refuse to toe its line that has been gaining pace since 2013.
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That campaign has seen potential voices of opposition including human rights lawyers, academics, artists, anti-corruption activists and religious leaders detained or jailed.
Human rights group Dui Hua last month reported a “staggering” jump in indictments on state security charges in 2013, Xi’s first full year in power.
“It tells us that Xi is determined to quell protest and dissent,” said John Kamm, the group’s American founder. “The climate is chilly and getting chillier.”
Recent months have seen the Communist Party offensive extend into the world of academia, with Xi Jinping demanding tighter ideological control over Chinese universities. In December one province announced plans to install closed circuit cameras in its classrooms, supposedly in order to perform “quality control” checks.
Mr Tie’s supporters say they have not been able to pinpoint the precise reasons for his arrest. However, believe it was the result of an online article in which he attacked Liu Yunshan, China’s former propaganda tsar who is now one of the Communist Party’s seven most powerful leaders.
Earlier this month Liu Yunshan called for an intensified crackdown on anyone “spreading harmful information on the internet”.
Mr Tie’s article described Mr Liu as “a person of the lowest order,” according to Radio Free Asia, a US-funded website.
The Communist Party leader was also “the driving force behind the corrupt elite in charge of China’s media,” the writer added.
Additional reporting Ailin Tang
Human rights group Dui Hua last month reported a “staggering” jump in indictments on state security charges in 2013, Xi’s first full year in power.
“It tells us that Xi is determined to quell protest and dissent,” said John Kamm, the group’s American founder. “The climate is chilly and getting chillier.”
Recent months have seen the Communist Party offensive extend into the world of academia, with Xi Jinping demanding tighter ideological control over Chinese universities. In December one province announced plans to install closed circuit cameras in its classrooms, supposedly in order to perform “quality control” checks.
Mr Tie’s supporters say they have not been able to pinpoint the precise reasons for his arrest. However, believe it was the result of an online article in which he attacked Liu Yunshan, China’s former propaganda tsar who is now one of the Communist Party’s seven most powerful leaders.
Earlier this month Liu Yunshan called for an intensified crackdown on anyone “spreading harmful information on the internet”.
Mr Tie’s article described Mr Liu as “a person of the lowest order,” according to Radio Free Asia, a US-funded website.
The Communist Party leader was also “the driving force behind the corrupt elite in charge of China’s media,” the writer added.
Additional reporting Ailin Tang
China: Tie Liu oldest activist charged under President Xi Jinping’s regime — 81-year-old self publishing his memoirs of Mao Zedong era is silenced
October 23, 2014
An 81-year-old man faces up to seven years in a Beijing prison for online criticism of the Chinese government and self-publishing the memoirs of those who suffered under Mao Zedong.
Writer Huang Zerong, also known as Tie Liu, has officially been charged with “illegal business activities” and “creating a disturbance” by the Chinese government, and is now believed to be the oldest activist charged under the President Xi Jinping regime, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Mr. Tie’s wife said that the charge of illegal business does not makes sense because he was not making a profit from the memoirs, which were often given to scholars and survivors of labor camps. The other charge stems from essays he wrote that were published online and used in Chinese publications overseas, The Times reported.Writer Huang Zerong, also known as Tie Liu, has officially been charged with “illegal business activities” and “creating a disturbance” by the Chinese government, and is now believed to be the oldest activist charged under the President Xi Jinping regime, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Chinese dissident and writer Huang Zerong, who goes by the pen name Teiliu, is seen in an undated file photo.
“I had expected bad news,” Mr. Tie’s wife, Ren Hengfang, said in a telephone interview from Beijing, The Times reported. “But this still seems a bit abnormal.”
Mr. Tie has been in a detention center since last month as the government builds its case against him. His lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, hopes to secure his release on bail due to old age and poor health, The Times reported.
Read more:http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/23/china-arrests-81-year-old-man-for-writing-memoirs-/#ixzz3H0IrClCa
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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Beijing Formally Charges Writer Who Published Memoirs of Victims of Mao Era
The New York Times
HONG KONG — The police in Beijing have formally charged an 81-year-old writer, Tie Liu, for privately publishing the testimony of aged or dead victims of Mao Zedong’s wrath and for writing scathing essays about Mao and present-day Communist Party leaders, Mr. Tie’s wife and his lawyer said on Thursday.
Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has pursued an intense campaign against political dissent, which has led to the imprisonment of dozens of activists. But Huang Zerong, known among friends and family by his pen name, Tie Liu, appears to be the oldest activist to be charged in Mr. Xi’s campaign. He has been held in a detention center since last month, and the formal charges will allow the police to hold him longer while they build a case.
Read the rest:
*******************************The South China Morning Post reported on September 15, 2014:
Huang’s wife has since been informed by police that her husband had been criminally detained on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. A second person identified as Huang Jing was also detained.
Chinese criminal procedure law restricts such detention periods to 30 days if suspects are not subsequently formally arrested and charged with a crime.
Huang’s detention “makes him China’s oldest ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ suspect,” Liu Xiaoyuan, a prominent lawyer and friend of Huang, wrote in a Tweet on Sunday evening.
The detention for his critical writing comes almost six decades after Huang was first denounced as a “rightist” in Mao Zedong’s crackdown on liberals after the Hundred Flowers campaign, in which the party chairman briefly tolerated criticism but then purged those who spoke up.
The then journalist in his twenties from Sichuan served 23 years in prison.
The Communist Party cleared his name in 1980. In 2010, he vowed to set up a one million yuan fund to finance legal aid for writers and journalists.
Radio Free Asia suggested Huang was detained for an article he wrote on the party’s propaganda chief. Huang has long been openly critical of Liu Yunshan, accusing him and his family of corruption in articles released online and calling on President Xi Jinping to dismiss the Politburo Standing Committee member.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1592956/chinese-writer-liu-tie-aged-81-held-after-criticising-communist
China detains, jails 81 year old writer and critic of Communist Party propaganda Tie Liu for ‘provoking trouble’
September 15, 2014
Chinese authorities said they detained Mr Huang for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”
From the BBC
Chinese writer Huang Zerong, also known as Tie Liu, has been detained by police allegedly for writing articles critical of a senior official.
Police arrested Mr Huang, 81, at his Beijing home early on Sunday morning.Mr Huang’s wife was later told he had been detained for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
She said he had written online articles which criticized Communist Party propaganda chief Liu Yunshan for restrictions of press freedom.
She told the Associated Press that her husband’s medical carer had also been detained on the same charge, with no reason given as to why.
The South China Morning Post reported that Mr Huang served 23 years in prison when he was in his twenties for being a “rightist” during Mao Zedong’s crackdown on liberals.
The Communist Party eventually cleared his name in 1980.
Activist Yang Maodong, also known as Guo Feixiong, is currently detained for allegedly disturbing public order
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Human rights lawyer and dissident Gao Zhisheng allegedly suffered abuse while in jail
Widespread crackdownMr Huang’s arrest comes a week after a court in Guangzhou postponed the trial of prominent human rights activist Yang Maodong after he instructed his lawyers to boycott proceedings.
Mr Yang, who is also known by his pen-name Guo Feixiang, has claimed that the trial is illegal and improper. He is accused of disturbing public order.
Chinese authorities have mounted a widespread crackdown on dissenters in recent years.
Dozens of activists and government critics are said to have been targeted, with many detained, and some prosecuted on broad public order charges.
Last month, well-known Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng was released having allegedly suffering physical and psychological abuse in jail.
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Police Detain Tie Liu, Beijing Writer and Underground Publisher
The New York Times
HONG KONG — At 81 years old and after decades imprisoned in labor camps as a foe of the Communist Party, the Beijing writer and underground publisher Tie Liu had said that he was too old to seriously worry the security police anymore. But they raided his home over the weekend and detained him on a charge of “creating a disturbance,” his wife and friends said on Monday.
In the dark of early Sunday, the police banged on the door of Mr. Tie’s house in a suburb of eastern Beijing, handed him a summons, made him dress and then led him away, his wife, Ren Hengfang, said in a telephone interview. Officers searched their home, hauling away four laptop computers, an iPad and his cellphone, as well as piles of books and periodicals, many of them privately published by Mr. Tie, she said.
“He asked, ‘What disturbance have I been stirring up?’ and they said, ‘You’ll find out when it’s time to find out,’” Ms. Ren said. “We’d warned him to think twice before publishing his essays, but he’s a stubborn character.”
Later on Sunday, the police put Mr. Tie under criminal detention, allowing them to hold him for at least 30 days, Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer who has been his friend for many years and has followed his case, said in a telephone interview. Ms. Ren said the police also detained Huang Jing, Mr. Tie’s domestic helper, who also helped his publishing, on suspicion of “creating a disturbance.” Nobody would answer questions at the detention center where his wife said Mr. Tie was being held.
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