Update | Chinese rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang convicted, but to be released soon after receiving three-year suspended jail sentence
He was convicted of charges of stirring ethnic hatred and provoking trouble
A Beijing court on Tuesday handed down a three-year suspended jail sentence to Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s most outspoken human rights lawyers, for posting online comments critical of the Communist Party.
Pu would be released in days but would no longer able to practise law, his lawyer Shang Baojun said.
The Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court found Pu, 50, guilty of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” but gave him a three-year reprieve, Shang said. Pu’s lawyer’s licence would be permanently revoked as convicted lawyers were barred from practising, he said.
Read more: Chinese rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang pays price for beliefs as he gets three-year suspended jail term over social media posts slamming the authorities
“To be incriminated over one’s speech in seven microblog messages –this is a very heavy price indeed,” Shang said.
The suspended sentence means Pu will be on probation for three years, legal experts say. If he violates the terms of the sentence or commits offences within those three years, he will have to serve his original sentence, they said.
Pu would be put under “residential surveillance” detention during the official period of appeal over the next 10 days, but would be released after that, Shang said. He said Pu would not appeal: “He believes history will make a judgment.”
The ordeal of Pu, famed for defending dissidents and rights activists, is widely seen as a political case to silence him and to warn other rights advocates against speaking up.
Amnesty International said the suspended prison sentence was “a deliberate attempt by the Chinese authorities to shackle a champion of freedom of expression”.
