Chinese Journalist Sentenced to 7 Years on Charges of Leaking State Secrets

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/asia/china-journalist-gao-yu-gets-7-year-sentence.html

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HONG KONG — Gao Yu, a 71-year-old Chinese journalist who has repeatedly challenged the Communist Party during a decades-long career, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday after a court in Beijing found her guilty of leaking state secrets abroad. Ms. Gao said she would appeal, according to her lawyer and her brother, who were in the courtroom.

The Third Intermediate People’s Court announced the verdict nearly five months after Ms. Gao stood trial there, a delay that one of her defense lawyers, Mo Shaoping, had said was unusual and suggested some indecision about how to handle the case. In the end, the court sided with the prosecution, as Chinese courts almost always do, especially in politically contentious cases.

“This outcome was expected, but we still feel it was wrong not to listen to the defense lawyers’ arguments,” Ms. Gao’s younger brother, Gao Wei, said by telephone after emerging from the court in north Beijing. “I signaled to her and told her to stay well. She said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to appeal.’”

Mr. Mo also confirmed the seven-year prison sentence in a telephone interview. “She said when she was being led out of the courtroom that she’d definitely appeal,” he said.

Ms. Gao’s lawyers and supporters have maintained that the charge of leaking state secrets abroad was absurd, even given the Chinese government’s broad definition of “state secrets.”

Mr. Mo said that Ms. Gao was convicted of disclosing a Communist Party directive that had already been widely summarized on government websites. The directive, called “Document No. 9,” laid out the party’s plans for an offensive against liberal political ideas and values. According to Mr. Mo, the verdict said that in July 2013, Ms. Gao gave the document to the Mirror Media Group, a Chinese news outlet based in the United States. The company, which published the directive, has denied receiving it from her. The New York Times also reported on the directive.

“There’s absolutely no basis for the case,” Ho Pin, the chief executive of the Mirror Media Group, said by telephone from New York after the verdict was announced. “There was no evidence. But they’ve delivered this verdict to use this case against Gao Yu to deter press freedom from emerging in China.”

According to the defense lawyers’ submission to the court, which Ms. Gao’s brother shared, the lawyers did not dispute that Ms. Gao had received a copy of “Document No. 9” from a retired official. But they argued there was no proof that she had known that it was a secret document, that she had copied it to her home computer or that she had passed it to the Mirror Media Group.

The imprisonment of Ms. Gao, whose husband died in early 2014, is the latest display of the Chinese Communist Party’s determination to stifle dissent and consolidate the power of President Xi Jinping.

A prominent human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, was arrested last year and faces several charges based on comments that he made on his microblog. Advocates of greater freedom for civil society have experienced detention and arrest and seen their organizations shut down. Most recently, five women campaigning for gender equality were detained by the police; they were released from jail on Monday after an international outcry.

International human rights groups said the imprisonment of Ms. Gao fit that pattern of tightening control under Mr. Xi.

”The heavy sentence — especially so for an ill 71-year-old — reflects the worsening crackdown on civil society and its defenders since President Xi Jinping came to power,” Maya Wang, a researcher for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy organization, said in an email. “It is meant as a message to other activists saying that the government has no tolerance for critical opinion.”

Mr. Gao said his sister has suffered from high blood pressure and a heart condition requiring medication, as well as other ailments.

A journalist since 1979, Ms. Gao faces her third long stint behind bars. She was detained by the police in Beijing in April 2014, when friends noticed that she had failed to show up at a gathering to mark the 25th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in June 1989. Ms. Gao came to prominence before the 1989 protests, when she was deputy editor in chief of the Economics Weekly, an outspokenly liberal journal.

“She’s very forthright and she’s also very principled,” Mr. Gao, her brother, said in an interview before the verdict was announced.

Ms. Gao was held by the authorities for nearly 15 months after the crackdown of 1989, when the government said that an article she had written was a blueprint for “turmoil and rebellion.” She was arrested and imprisoned from 1993 to 1999 on charges of leaking state secrets, because of articles she wrote for Hong Kong publications about elite Chinese politics. She was released in 1999 on medical parole.

Before her most recent detention, Ms. Gao wrote for a Chinese-language website of Deutsche Welle, the German news service, and often made barbed criticisms of Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping. She often mixed with former officials and activists advocating political liberalization.

After her arrest, Ms. Gao was shown on Chinese television news apparently admitting to the charge of leaking a secret document. But at her trial, she insisted that she was innocent and had made the statement because she worried for her son, Zhao Meng, who was detained along with her. Mr. Zhao was later released.

Since Ms. Gao’s arrest, the government has introduced more restrictions on Chinese people working for foreign media.

According to Mr. Gao, the verdict Friday said that if his sister serves her full sentence, taking into account the time she has already spent in detention, she will be released in April 2021, when she will be 77 years old.

Mr. Gao said his sister appeared determined and sharp-minded as she listened to the verdict being read.

“She was so thin that I almost didn’t recognize her,” Mr. Gao said. “I had sent some clothes for her that were already smaller than before, but even they were loose on her.”