Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009journalists in prison: chinain Ningbo, in eastern China’s Zhejiangprovince. In October 2006, Zhang wasformally arrested on charges of “incitingsubversion.” He was sentenced to sixyears in prison by the Ningbo IntermediatePeople’s Court in March 2007,followed by one year’s deprivation ofpolitical rights.Authorities did not clarify their allegationsagainst Zhang, but supportersbelieved they were linked to onlinearticles critical of government actions.An editorial he wrote two days beforehis detention called attention tointernational organizations’ criticismof the government’s human rightsrecord and, in particular, to the poortreatment of journalists and theirsources two years before the start ofthe Olympics. Zhang referred to thesituation as “Olympicgate.”Zhang was an author, screenwriter,and reporter who served a year and ahalf of “re-education through labor” in1989 on counterrevolutionary chargesfor his writing in support of protesters.He was dismissed from a positionin the local writers association and beganworking as a freelance writer.His Web site, Aiqinhai, was closed inMarch 2006 for unauthorized postingof international and domestic news.He had also been a contributor toseveral U.S.-based Chinese-languageWeb sites, including Boxun News, thepro-democracy forum Minzhu Luntan,and Epoch Times.In September 2007, Shandong provincialauthorities refused to renewthe law license of Zhang’s lawyer, pressfreedom advocate Li Jianqiang, whoalso represented imprisoned journalistsGuo Qizhen and Yang Tongyan.Zhang’s health deteriorated significantlyin jail, according to his wife, DongMin, who spoke with CPJ by telephonein October 2008. He suffered from a debilitatingdisease affecting the nervoussystem and was unable to perform basictasks without help. Appeals for paroleon medical grounds were not grantedand, by 2009, he was no longer able towrite, according to the IndependentChinese PEN Center. His scheduledrelease date is September 2012.Yang Maodong (Guo Feixiong)FreelanceIMPRISONED: September 14, 2006Yang, commonly known by his penname Guo Feixiong, was a prolificwriter, activist, and legal analyst forthe Beijing-based Shengzhe law firm.Police detained him in September2006 after he reported and gave adviceon a number of sensitive politicalcases facing the local government inhis home province of Guangdong.Yang was detained for three monthsin 2005 for “sending news overseas”and disturbing public order after hereported on attempts by villagers inTaishi village, Guangdong, to ousta village chief. He was eventually releasedwithout prosecution, but remainedvocal on behalf of rights defenders,giving repeated interviewsto foreign journalists. A police beatinghe sustained in February 2006Nanjing-based reporter Sun was arrested,along with his wife, He Fang,on May 30, 2007, according to theU.S.-based Web site Boxun News. Sunhad previously documented harassmentby authorities in Nanjing, Jiangsuprovince, as a result of his audio,video, and print reports for the bannedChinese-language news site. BoxunNews said authorities confiscated acomputer and video equipment fromthe couple at the time of their arrest.In the arrest warrant, Sun was accusedof possessing an illegal weapon,and a police statement issued on June1, 2007, said he was the leader of acriminal gang. Lawyers met with Sunand He in June, but the couple was latprompteda well-known human rightslawyer, Gao Zhisheng, to stage a highprofilehunger strike. Police in Beijingdetained Yang for two days that Februaryafter he protested several governmentactions, including the closureof the popular Yunnan bulletin board,where he had posted informationabout the Taishi village case.Yang’s September 2006 arrest was for“illegal business activity,” internationalnews reports said. After a 15-monthpretrial detention, a court convicted himfor illegally publishing a magazine in2001, according to U.S.-based advocacygroups. One of a series of magazineshe published since the 1990s, PoliticalEarthquake in Shenyang, exposed one ofthe largest official graft cases in China’shistory in Shenyang, Liaoning province,according to the Dui Hua Foundation.CPJ’s 2001 International Press FreedomAwardee, Jiang Weiping, spent five yearsin prison for reporting on the same casefor a magazine in Hong Kong.Yang’s magazine had been publishedwithout authorization; police interrogatedhis assistant and confiscatedfunds in 2001, but the case attractedno further punitive measures until hebecame involved in activism.Yang’s defense team from the MoShaoping law firm in Beijing arguedthat a five-year limit for prosecuting illegalpublishing had expired by the timeof his trial, according to the Dui HuaFoundation, which published the defensestatement in 2008. But Yang wasstill sentenced to five years in prison.Yang has gone on hunger strikeseveral times to protest ill treatmentby authorities in Meizhou Prisonin Guangdong. He was brutally forcefedon at least one of these occasionsand remained in poor health, accordingto the advocacy group HumanRights in China (HRIC). The groupsaid his treatment in the detentioncenter before his trial was so aggressivethat he attempted suicide. Policesubjected him to around-the-clock interrogationsfor 13 days, HRIC said,and administered electric shocks. Thegroup also said that his family hadbeen persecuted since his imprisonment:His wife was laid off and histwo children were held back in schoolin retribution for his work.Sun Lin, freelanceIMPRISONED: May 30, 2007304305