Journalist Huang Xueqin was sentenced this Friday, 14th, to five years in prison, in Chinaafter being arrested in 2021 and accused of “inciting the subversion of State power”, a sanction that has been criticized by international organizations.
And Xueqin has served as a promoter of the #MeToo movement, exposing whistleblower cases and recounting her experiences as a victim of sexual harassment at a news agency.
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The 36-year-old journalist had a blog on the WeChat platform, from where she promoted accusations of harassment. Her arrest occurred in 2021, just days before traveling to the United Kingdom to study.
But it wasn’t just Xueqin who was condemned. Activist Wang Jianbing was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on the same charges.
In the case of the Chinese journalist, it was only in 2023 that she was accused of “publishing distorted and provocative articles and speeches on social media that attack the national government” and of “bringing together organizers abroad to participate in online training about non-governmental organizations”. violent actions”, notes the AFP news agency.
Wang Jianbing was accused of having published “erroneous articles and speeches attacking the Chinese political system and government” and of having joined “foreign online subversive groups,” including one that celebrated the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.
International rejection
The conviction against the Chinese journalist and activist led to the rejection of international organizations such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF). They indicate that during this period of confinement, Xueqin was subjected to torture.
Cédric Alviani, director of RSF’s Asia-Pacific office, noted that “Huang Xueqin was only serving the public interest by revealing social issues and should never have been detained.”
“We urge the international community to increase pressure on the Chinese authorities to ensure their release, along with the other 118 journalists and activists in favor of press freedom, who are detained in the country,” he said in a report by the Europapress agency. For this reason, he described China as “the world’s biggest prison for journalists.”
On the other hand, the director of Amnesty International for China, Sarah Brooks, indicated that the journalist is completing a thousand days of confinement and her sentence has a “greater discouraging effect on Human Rights and the defense of social rights” in that country.
But he also warned that the recent convictions “show how terrified the Chinese government is of the emerging wave of activists who dare to speak out to protect rights.”
More phrases in China
The organization Reporters Without Borders has already pointed out: in China there are 118 journalists and activists arrested.
One of the most emblematic cases occurred in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the arrest of the journalist Zhang Zhan. Amnesty International highlights on its website that Zhang Zhan traveled in 2020 to Wuhan, which was the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. “She wanted to tell the world that they were arresting journalists and harassing the families of victims of the virus”, but she was arrested and that same year she was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of “inciting fights and creating problems”.
Information about what was happening in Wuhan was published on the YouTube, WeChat and Twitter platforms. At the end of May this year she was released and taken to her brother’s house, where she is under surveillance.
Reporters Without Borders also warned about the detention of journalists Yang Liu, Qin Ziy, Siqi Li and Wang Xue, during 2023. Their arrests took place just weeks after the protests of November 27, 2022, against the Covid-19 plan, used . for censorship and surveillance of Chinese citizens.
But it’s not just about journalists. In 2023, notes Amnesty International, activists such as jurist Xu Zhiyong and human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi were convicted, accused of “subversion of state power” in 2022. Lawyer Chang Weiping was also convicted, after having released information about the torture he claimed to have committed. he suffered during his detention in 2020.
Lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife, Xu Yan, were detained shortly after meeting with representatives of the European Union. They were also accused of “inciting subversion of state power”. The same thing happened to Li Yuhan, a 70-year-old lawyer. She had been detained since the end of 2017.
Source: Elcomercio
I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.
