Weiquan Movement
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Weiquan Movement
The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for AIDS victims, environmental damage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment. Individuals involved in the Weiquan movement have met with occasionally harsh reprisals from Chinese government officials, including disbarment, detention, harassment, and, in extreme instances, torture. Authorities have also responded to the movement with the launch of an educat ...
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Civil Right
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of society and the state without discrimination or repression. Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples' physical and mental integrity, life, and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as sex, race, sexual orientation, national origin, color, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, social class, religion, and disability; and individual rights such as privacy and the freedom of thought, speech, religion, press, assembly, and movement. Political rights include natural justice (procedural fairness) in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy; and rights of participation in civil society and politics such as freedom of a ...
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Xu Zhiyong
Xu Zhiyong (; born March 2, 1973) is a Chinese civil rights activist and formerly a lecturer at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He was one of the founders of the NGO Open Constitution Initiative and an active rights lawyer in China who campaigned against corruption and helped those underprivileged. He is the main founder and icon of the New Citizens' Movement in China. In January 2014 he was sentenced to four years in prison for "gathering crowds to disrupt public order". He was detained again on February 15, 2020, in the southern city of Guangzhou after two months in hiding, for his participation in a meeting of rights activists and lawyers in Xiamen in December 2019 in which "democratic transition in China" was discussed. Personal life Xu was born in Minquan County, Henan Province in 1973. He was married to Cui Zheng (), a journalist. Their daughter was born on January 13, 2014, while Xu was in a detention center facing trial. He had been in hiding si ...
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1989 Tiananmen Square Protests And Massacre
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth Clearing () or June Fourth Massacre (), troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement () or the Tiananmen Square Incident (). The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary H ...
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Tan Zuoren
Tan Zuoren (born 15 May 1954), from Chengdu, Sichuan province, People's Republic of China, is an environmentalist, writer and former editor of ''Literati'' magazine (文化人).Chinadigitaltimes.com.Chinadigitaltimes.com" ''Cui Weiping (崔卫平): Self-initiated and Idealistic Thinking and Action.'' Retrieved on August 12, 2009. On February 9, 2010, Zuoren was sentenced to 5 years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power." Amnesty International Asia-Pacific Deputy Director said: “His arrest, unfair trial and now the guilty verdict are further disturbing examples of how the Chinese authorities use vague and over broad laws to silence and punish dissenting voices.” Due to the nature of the charges and circumstances of the trial, he has been described as a political prisoner. 2009 court case After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake Tan came up with a proposal called the "5.12 Student Archive" (5·12学生档案) asking people who lost their children in the quake to set u ...
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Chengdu
Chengdu (, ; Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively Romanization of Chinese, romanized as Chengtu, is a Sub-provincial division, sub-provincial city which serves as the Capital city, capital of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a population of 20,937,757 inhabitants during the 2020 Chinese census, it is the fourth most populous city in China, and it is the only city apart from the four Direct-administered municipalities of China, direct-administered municipalities with a population of over 20 million (the other three are Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing). It is traditionally the hub in Southwest China. Chengdu is located in central Sichuan. The surrounding Chengdu Plain is known as the "Country of Heaven" () and the "Land of Abundance". Its prehistoric settlers included the Sanxingdui culture. The site of ...
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Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo (; 28 December 1955 – 13 July 2017) was a Chinese writer, literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end communist one-party rule in China. He was arrested numerous times, and was described as China's most prominent dissident and the country's most famous political prisoner. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer; he died a few weeks later on 13 July 2017. Liu rose to fame in 1980s Chinese literary circles with his exemplary literary critiques. He eventually became a visiting scholar at several international universities. He returned to China to support the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was imprisoned for the first time from 1989 to 1991, again from 1995 to 1996 and yet again from 1996 to 1999 for his involvement on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power. He served as the President of the Independe ...
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Inciting Subversion Of State Power
Inciting subversion of state power () is a crime under the law of the People's Republic of China. It is article 105, paragraph 2 of the 1997 revision of the People's Republic of China's Penal Code.''The 1997 Criminal Code of the People's Republic of China''
Volume 1 of Chinese law series, Laws, etc. (Chinese law series) ; v. 1, by Wei Luo, published by Wm. S. Hein Publishing, 1998, , , page 73, via books.google.com on 10 10 9
The "inciting subversion" crime is related to earlier Chinese laws criminalizing activities deemed ""; as was the case with its predecessor, the charge is wielded by the government as
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Political Offences In China
This is a list of political offences in China. During the Maoist era, particularly during the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution, the judicial system of China was often used for political persecution of rivals, and penalties such as jail terms or capital punishment were largely imposed on the authority's political enemies, or anyone who attempted to challenge it. During those times, vague accusations such as "counter-revolutionary" ( zh, 反革命), capitalist roader (), " running dog of the imperialist " () could have had the accused imprisoned, or shot by firing squad. These labels fell out of use following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. In more recent times, accusations such as “illegal possession of state secret” () and “inciting subversion of state power” () carry long jail terms. The vague charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” has also been frequently used to detain human rights activists. Former (1949-1990) Rightist " ...
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Li Heping
Li Heping () is a civil rights lawyer in the People's Republic of China and a partner of the Beijing Global Law Firm who was abducted on 10 July 2015. He is a prominent figure in China's Weiquan (rights defending) movement, having defended underground Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, dissident writers, and victims of forced evictions, among others.National Endowment for Democracy Li Heping">Biographies -> Li Heping, 2008. Advocacy Li began his career in civil rights advocacy in the late 1990s, and emerged as a vocal critic of the Communist Party's policies and practices toward unregistered religious groups. He has sought to appeal on behalf other prominent Weiquan lawyers Chen Guangcheng and Gao Zhisheng, and has defended dissident Yang Zili and environmental activist Tan Kai.Amnesty International'China: Fear for Saftely: Li Heping' 3 October 2007. Li has also defended victims of forced land requisition in China. Li identifies as Christian,China Aid'Christian Attorney Li ...
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Zheng Enchong
Zheng Enchong (born 2 September 1950) is a Shanghai-based '' Weiquan'' (rights defending) lawyer. Zheng was sentenced in 2003 to three years in prison for his advocacy on behalf of citizens who had been forcibly evicted from their homes. The charge stemmed from two faxes Zheng was alleged to have sent to the New York-based organisation Human Rights in China concerning workers' protests. Upon his release from prison, he remained under house arrest. His lawyer Guo Guoting was allegedly forbidden to see him. Guo Guoting now lives in Canada. Zheng Enchong had advised more than 500 families displaced by Shanghai's urban redevelopment projects on their rights to fair compensation. In 2005, he received the Human Rights Award of the German Association of Judges. Biography A lawyer from Shanghai, represented or advised around 500 families who were evicted due to urban redevelopment in the city, and who received little or no compensation from the authorities. He was detained in June 20 ...
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Gao Zhisheng
Gao Zhisheng (born 20 April 1964) is a Chinese human rights attorney and dissident known for defending activists and religious minorities and documenting human rights abuses in China. Because of his work, Zhisheng has been disbarred and detained by the Chinese government several times, and severely tortured. He last disappeared in February 2009 and was unofficially detained until December 2011, when it was announced that he has now been imprisoned for three years. His commitment to defending his clients is influenced by his Christian beliefs and their tenets on morality and compassion.Finney, Richard and Ding Xiao (4 September 2007) "China's Urban Christians an Unknown Quantity For Beijing", Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 7 October 2007 Gao's memoir, ''A China More Just'' (2007), documents his "fight as a rights lawyer in the world's largest communist state." In subsequent writing, he accuses the ruling Chinese Communist Party of state-sponsored torture and reports having been t ...
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