In a stunning move, an appeals court has overturned the guilty verdict of activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng. Chen was sentenced to four years in prison this past summer after launching a crusade against the forced sterilization of peasant women. Local officials had ordered the sterilizations as well as forced abortions in an effort to meet population growth targets for their districts. Chen sued and organized demonstrations against the policies. Within weeks he was under house arrest. Then he was taken into custody. 10 months later, he was on trial for ‘distrubing the peace’ and ‘inciting unrest.’ Oh yeah, did I mention that Chen has been blind since childhood?
Mr. Chen’s first trial was widely condemned as a travesty. Beijing-based lawyers whom Mr. Chen chose to defend him were harassed before the trial and then barred from the hearing. The court assigned Mr. Chen two local attorneys who introduced no evidence, called no witnesses and did not contest the charges against him.
It is unclear why an appeals court in Linyi, which is the same urban area where local officials ordered the crackdown on Mr. Chen, would decide to overturn the verdict against him.
It is possible that higher authorities told the court to do so. But it is also possible that the maneuver was intended to prevent having the case appealed to a higher court that does not answer to local authorities.
The actual prospects for a new trial are uncertain.
The uncharacteristic nature of an overturn on appeal in a Chinese court makes this case especially interesting. I have to think that this was an order from on high to make this case go away. Definitely worth keeping an eye on future developments.
5 responses so far ↓
1 無名 - wu ming // Oct 31, 2006 at 10:19 pm
if china is really to move to the “rule of law,” to use the phrasing that has been hesitantly creeping into official pronouncements since hu jintao and wen jiabao came to power, if not earlier, cases like these are going to have to be allowed to be overturned. good news, at any rate.
2 Chris // Oct 31, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Good news indeed. Could Chen have simply caused enough headache that someone upstairs decided it’s easier to just let him go than let him remain as a symbol (revolutionary martyr, anyone?) of growing unrest? He’s gotten enough foreign ink to be a nuisance, and the case does seem emblematic of all the recent troubles.
3 ChinaLawBlog // Nov 1, 2006 at 12:54 am
I see Beijing uses its courts to rein in out of control local officials. Chen’s case was really about out of control local officials in Shandong Province. Though Beijing sometimes needs to protect the local hacks, there are other times where it does not make domestic political sense to do so. I think this was one of those times.
Then you have Beijing now requiring all executions run through the Supreme People’s Court. This is another case of Beijing trying to strengthen the center of its court system at the expense of the provinces.
4 Lao Lu // Nov 1, 2006 at 6:25 am
That last sentence (”The actual prospects for a new trial are uncertain”) is quite worrying. Could it be that this is a maneuver to do some face saving vis-a-vis the protesting world outside, while actually for Chen nothing is changing. The sign is positive in itself, but without any follow-up in the form of a retrial, it will always ring hollow.
5 花崗齋之愚公 // Nov 1, 2006 at 10:11 am
I’m taking the ‘cautiously optimistic’ approach here.
@CLB,
I thought of you guys when I saw this article and the one on controlling the number of executions, and I think your interpretation is spot on.
Leave a Comment