China Jails Anti-Corruption Activists As Part Of A Continuing Campaign To Stifle Criticism

June 24, 2014 by admin

On June 19th BBC News reported that the Chinese government has jailed three anti-corruption activists.

Wei Zhongping and Liu Ping who are associated with the Chinese New Citizens Movement, were both given six-and-a-half year jail sentences while the third activist, Li Sihua received a shorter sentence. According to the article, police detained the three activists after they took photographs with banners urging officials to disclose their assets. All three were convicted of “creating a disturbance”; Liu and Wei were also both charged with a number of other supposed crimes including “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place” and “using an evil cult to undermine law enforcement.” In response to the official verdict, William Nee of Amnesty International declared the charges “preposterous.”

The Chinese government has persecuted members of the New Citizens Movement, an organization dedicated to facilitating China’s transfer to a civil society, since it was launched in 2010 by a civil liberties lawyer named Xu Zhiyong and a venture capitalist named Wang Gonguan. The events detailed in this article demonstrate that brutal suppression of even the mildest dissent remains a core policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Chinese government may be cracking down on corruption, especially at the local level, but it is still far more concerned with silencing levied by private citizens then it is with improving its own administration.