Word: prisoners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...particularly significant holiday in the calendar of the People's Republic but one that perhaps meant that Beijing wanted as little attention on it as possible in the West. Following a two-hour trial on Dec. 23, the literary critic Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison in Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court. His crime: writing a series of essays questioning the monopoly on power of the Communist Party as well as compiling a manifesto demanding political reform and increased democracy. The ruling said Liu was guilty of "inciting subversion of state power," a charge...
...year ago, just before the release of Charter 08, a manifesto signed by 303 Chinese intellectuals that called for extensive reforms of the country's political system. While dozens of signers were detained, put under surveillance or otherwise harassed by authorities, Liu is the only one to face prison time. Charter 08 received no coverage within China but, after its release in December 2008, thousands Chinese within the country and overseas signed the petition online, a situation that embarrassed the Chinese government so soon after coming off the highs of its Olympic spotlight. (See how Chinese dissidents tried to propagate...
...strikers, and was jailed for 20 months after the government's bloody crackdown. He was later sentenced to three years in a labor camp beginning in 1996 for further questioning China's one-party system. Along with Hu Jia, who was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison on a subversion charge in 2008, Liu was one of the most prominent dissidents active in mainland China...
...conviction and sentencing, say human rights groups, is evidence that beneath China's pretensions of modernity is the old, intolerant authoritarianism, albeit gussied up with legalisms. "The Chinese government's decision to sentence Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison on subversion charges is a travesty of justice and reflects yet again the government's willingness to use the law as a weapon to silence dissent," Phelim Kine, an Asia researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote after the verdict. "The severity of Liu's sentence puts the lie to the government's lofty rhetoric on commitment...
When North Korean authorities caught Jeong Young Sil helping Christians escape to China seven years ago, they did not take her transgression lightly. First, they pulled out her teeth and fingernails to get information about her underground church in the country's northeast. Then, they threw her in prison for four years. "They demanded to know who was helping me and where they were," says Jeong, an evangelist in her 50s now living in South Korea, who uses an alias to protect her family back home. Despite their efforts, the Northern officials could not stop her. After she fled...