INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightFamilyImage caption
Wang Quanzhang went missing in a 2015 crackdown
China has sentenced
prominent human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang to four and a half years in prison for state subversion.Wang, 42, had defended political
campaigners, victims of land seizures, as well as followers of the banned spiritual Falun Gong movement
He was one of several lawyers and activists arrested in 2015 crackdown, and was the last to go on trial.China has in recent years
intensified its prosecution of rights lawyers
Mr Wang was "found guilty of subverting state power, sentenced to four years and six months in prison, and deprived of political rights for
five years," the court in Tianjin said.The trial had been conducted behind closed doors with journalists and foreign diplomats barred from
entering the courthouse.John Sudworth, TheIndianSubcontinent News, BeijingWang Quanzhang had disappeared so completely into a legal black
that, for much of the past three and half years, his family did not know if he was alive or dead.He was denied family visits and denied the
right to appoint his own lawyer.Perhaps he'd been seriously injured, those who knew him wondered
Or perhaps, against all the odds, he was somehow managing to hold out - refusing the pressure, and perhaps the torture too, and refusing to
confess.Other lawyers caught up in the same 2015 crackdown, have since been processed, convicted and sentenced.Whatever the reason for the
delay in Mr Wang's case - his brief one-day trial was finally held behind closed doors over Christmas - he has been found guilty for much
the same reason; his attempts to use the letter of the Chinese law to hold the authorities to account in their own Communist Party-run
courts.As the Party has been making clear in recent years, it sees concepts such as constitutionalism and an independent judicial system as
dangerous western ideals.Mr Wang's fate is likely intended to reinforce that chilling message
Michael Caster, researcher and author of The People's Republic of the Disappeared, told the TheIndianSubcontinent that Wang's case was
"emblematic of Xi Jinping's assault on the human rights and legal community"."The rights defence and broader civil society community in
China is rightly outraged
For some time now they have rallied around Wang Quanzhang and his wife Li Wenzu as symbolic of both abuse and resistance under Xi Jinping,"
he said after the sentencing.Image:Women shave heads over their husband's detentions in ChinaMr Caster said that "the UN Working Group on
Arbitrary Detention has found that Wang's detention is arbitrary, which means that under international law he should never have faced a
trial in the first place, and so obviously should never have faced any length of sentence".Rights groups have condemned the trial with
Amnesty International calling it a "sham" and the verdict "a gross injustice"
"It's outrageous that Wang Quanzhang is being punished for peacefully standing up for human rights in China," Amnesty China researcher
Doriane Lau said in a statement
China's crackdown on lawyers, known as the "709" crackdown because it began on 9 July, has been seen by activists as a sign of a growing
intolerance of dissent under President Xi Jinping.More than 200 people were detained in that sweep, with many given jail terms, suspended
sentences or house arrest.
