Congress' China human-rights watchdog has demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Chinese #MeToo and labor activist Li Qiaochu, who had already been detained for three years, after a closed-door trial on subversion charges. Photo by Pen America/
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Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Congress' China human-rights watchdog demanded the immediate and unconditional release of a Chinese #MeToo rights activist after a closed-door trial on subversion charges that ended without a verdict.
Li Qiaochu, who stood trial in a Shandong court Tuesday on the "absurd charge of incitement" for publicizing the torture of jailed activists Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, needs urgent medical treatment and must be released unconditionally, the Congressional-Executive Committee on China wrote on social media.
Her lawyer was barred from the trial for "inciting subversion of state power," which carries a prison sentence of up to five years if she is found guilty, the group Free Li Qiaochu said.
The initial trial of Li, who has already been in detention for three years, was postponed in June after the only lawyer allowed into court said he could no longer represent her after he was prevented from presenting any evidence.
Amnesty International condemned Tuesday's trial as a sham.
"In reconvening Li Qiaochu's trial, Chinese authorities are trying to put a veneer of legitimacy over years of harassment and detention aimed at silencing her peaceful dissent, with vanishingly thin evidence that amounts to little more than guilt by association," said Amnesty International's China lead Sarah Brooks.
The 32-year-old was first detained and held incommunicado for four months in February 2020, the same day partner Xu, one of China's best-known human rights activists, was taken into custody 1,300 miles away in Guangdong province, according to the committee.
After being released on bail in June 2020, Li summarized her period in detention as "black hoods and handcuffs, closed rooms, 24-hour white lights".
In February 2021, authorities from Shandong province returned to Beijing and rearrested her, the same day she publicized the torture and maltreatment of Xu and Ding by uploading articles to an activist network the pair had set up.
Li, who was first hospitalized six weeks later after being denied medication for a chronic depressive disorder, has had repeated applications for medical parole rejected and her family has been refused permission to visit.
The former Tsinghua University sociology researcher had previously been involved with helping migrant workers who had been evicted from their homes in Beijing in 2017. She later supported several #MeToo campaigns and helped Xu on his Beautiful China website, which carried articles on China's civil rights movement.
In April, a court in Shandong sentenced academic and lawyer Xu, 50, to 14 years in prison and human rights lawyer Ding, 54, to a 10-year term, after finding the pair guilty of organizing and planning subversion of state power by founding and scaling up New Citizens' Movement, an activist network.
Xu and Ding's "cruelly farcical convictions and sentences" were condemned by Human Rights Watch which it said demonstrated President Xi Jinping's "unstinting hostility toward peaceful activism."
