He was charged with “subversion” for promoting a website critical of the Beijing government. At the World Forum for Constitutional Democracy, the dissident published articles that are considered “inflammatory.” His sister speaks of a “shameful” sentence because she hits a person who fights against “injustices.”
Beijing () – The Chinese authorities sentenced Guo Feixiong, a veteran human rights activist, to eight years in prison, accused of “subversion” for having created a website critical of the Beijing government in which he called for a country based on the “constitutional democracy”. Yang Maoping told Radio Free Asia (RFA), the judges of the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court found his 56-year-old brother Yang Maodong – known by the pseudonym Guo Feixiong – guilty of “inciting the subversion of the powers of the State”.
He is referring to the creation in 2020 of an online portal called “World Forum for Constitutional Democracy” – his sister continues to explain – in which he published and reproduced articles that are considered “inflammatory”. The eight-year sentence is “a shameful act” because it affects people who fight “against injustice” or only make “simple requests.”
In January 2021, police arrested Guo at Shanghai Pudong Airport as he tried to board a plane bound for the United States. The dissident wanted to meet his cancer-stricken wife, Zhang Qing, who had left the country for treatment; the woman she passed away at the beginning of the following year without having seen her husband again. Guo has long fought for human rights in China, dating back to the Tiananmen protests of 1989, when the regime massacred thousands of students calling for freedom and democracy.
Guo was first arrested in 2006 and spent 11 years in prison. In 2013, the authorities jailed him again for calling on the government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In December 2015, he launched a prophecy against the Chinese Communist Party: “If you continue to condemn the democrats and those who seek justice,” he said, “you will only make them stronger and hasten your own downfall.” The dissident was released from prison in August 2019 but remained under constant police control and during his imprisonment – in which he carried out a hunger strike for months that weakened his body – he suffered severe torture. To stop his weight loss, prison authorities force-fed him with a nasal tube.
His colleague and activist Zhu Chengzhi commented on the new sentence, stressing that a sentence as long as Guo’s was effectively equivalent to a “death sentence” given his deteriorating health from the prolonged hunger strike. “The authorities – he accuses – have imposed the death sentence on him” because the prolonged abstinence from food caused “enormous damage to his health.” “I am afraid that Guo Feixiong – concludes Zhu – will not be able to survive until the end of the sentence.”
